The ceasefire has collapsed,
spontaneously,
like a wave function under observation
of a city where children keep dying and new acronyms are birthed
Wounded-Child-No-Surviving-Family
Survinging-Child-No-Remaining-Limbs
Where food keeps vanishing,
electricity stops flowing,
like a decree of nature
Where fattened stray dogs roam quiet streets,
Where bombs descend like rainfall,
Skies of hellfire break the darkness
as augmented elements of reality
Where parents solve the calculus of survival—
The rate of change of body mass is proportional to the number of aid trucks allowed in the prison
—deep inside the cracks of their soul
Children learn a new math in the school of life,
sitting on top the rubble of their classrooms
180 children dead in 51 minutes. How many new amputations without anaesthesia?
Bundle these observations onto your being
18 months
A hundred thousand dead
Eight hundred and seventy three thousand total limbs
Let it collapse under the overwhelming density of its own weight
It will pull you in against your will,
to count the stubs, prune-like, under the tips of your fingers,
To feel the cold of the scalpel against Fatima’s skin,
the heat of Ali’s blood spreading over his four year old limb,
Then the grind of the saw against Ahmed’s bone
the white dust on Hajra’s foot, no bigger than your palm
Feel the air not entering Hashim’s lungs
the eyes rolling inside Hadi’s skull
Then the shock of the outside reaching the tender nerve,
the deafening screech,
the snap of fibre,
the obliteration of all senses in a spark,
the wiping out of existence,
the static of nothingness
Stare into that dense abyss,
hating your silence,
hating yourself,
hating the world,
hating everything beloved
Then jump in wilfully,
giving in to the tug of
Gravity
swallowing you in over infinite time,
Taking you right in
to the heart of darkness
Chromological 