Note: Written after watching the video of a ten year old, crying in despair, during the enraging Israel-Palestine violence. The weeping ten-year-old Gaza girl questions the ethos behind the war – why should children bear the brunt?

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Red sweat trickles down strained necks,

They should have adorned pearls and a chirpy rhythm singing innocent lullaby’s.

Broken limbs peek from below freckled debris; meek, sorrowful, lost.

Struggling threadbare, inviting life that betrayed them; this wasn’t the promised tomorrow parental legacies had sung to them.

While, a sway away, an estranged child cries aloud, ‘I’m only 10!’

She strains to hear a gaggle of nonsensical giggles, a worrying mother’s cry for dinner, a plethora of unfinished homework strewn over the cushioned bed and dreams of a setting Sun, that will rise again, with her routine, her jamboree in toe!

Alas! The repulsive truth - replaced, substituted.

Brazing sirens, gigantic throbbing bombs, carrion carnage, fastidious bullets meet her hungry eyes!

The mother is gone, the cousins, the father’s never to return and the friends too.

Poised in denial,

Betrayed by brotherhood,

This surrogate second life reels unkind messages.

She screams, yells, nuzzling shredded threads of a past that was her present a breath back.

All gone! Bygone!

Like Hide ‘n’ Seek, she played with her brethren, where she closed her eyes, counted till ten and whoosh! They were gone!

Hidden under baited winds,

Below broken willows,

Behind gasping streams..

And she looked up nooks and corners,

Counting them out of their cocooned locales.

Perhaps! This is the same game,

Perhaps, they reinvented the rules,

Perhaps, if she braises the bruises and closes her twinkles, the lashes would flap in the story she knew was written for her.

As the red trickles and fumbles her eyesight, she tries the trick one more time.

Dismal coughs deepen the whispers as she counts ...

One

Two.. three

Four....six... eight!

Boom! Bang!

She falters,

Trembling as fragmented debris flitters unabashed, lambasting her salient prayer..

She mutters, gasping at the dwindling twilight

“I’m only 10”

By Kshipra Narain

From: Switzerland

Website: https://kshiprabhandarinarain.blogspot.com

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