I Carry the War in Me : The Second Chapter

There is a war they cannot see.Not on battlefields or borders,But inside the caverns of my chest—Deep, quiet, and endlessly burning. I wake each day with grief clinging to my skin,With rage tucked beneath my ribs,With sorrow trailing behind my steps like a shadowThat doesn’t disappear when the sun rises.I laugh, sometimes—But it catches in my throat.Not because joy isn’t real,But because guilt sits behind it,asking,“How can you smile when they are burying their children in pieces?” I carry the war in me.It lives in my blood,In my fingertips,In the way I cannot look away,Even when I want to.Even when my spirit begs for pause.Because somewhere in Gaza,A mother is calling out the names of her children,But no one answers.Because somewhere in Rafah,A child is learning what terror sounds likebefore learning how to spell their name. And I—I sit miles away, oceans away,Scrolling through stories soaked in dust and blood,Watching lives unravel in real time.Helpless.Angry.Shattered. People talk of traumaAs something personal,As something you own—But I am learning,That some traumas are collective.Some wounds stretch across continents,Across cultures,Across language,And still—They bleed the same. I carry this war in silence,Because when I speak,Some call it politics.As if genocide is a debate.As if ethnic cleansing is a headline to skim past.As if the cries of a peopleCan be muted by indifference,Or buried beneath propaganda. I scream inwardly,So loud my soul trembles,But outwardly,I whisper.I write.I weep.Because I don’t know what else to doWhen the world keeps spinningAs if bones aren’t breaking beneath the rubble. I watch leaders offer nothing but lies,I see governments turn their backs,I witness journalists silenced,Truths erased,And all the while,The bombs don’t pause.The skies don’t clear.The children don’t come back. How do you hold this kind of acheand not collapse?How do you witness genocideand still go to work,Still eat dinner,Still reply “I’m fine” when asked? Inside, I am not fine.I am falling apartFor people I’ve never met,But feel tied to—By justice,By humanity,By the simple truth,That no one deserves to die in silence. This war has made a home in me.It’s in the shaking handsWhen I read the news.In the clenched jawWhen someone says,“It’s complicated,”As if murder is ever unclear. It’s in the prayers I mutter at 3AM,Half-hope,Half-plea,Asking God if He still hears the criesFrom shattered mosques,From hospitals turned graveyards,From broken lullabies that never got to end. And yet,Amid this despair,A part of me still resists.Still believes.Still dares to hope—Because to give up now,Would be betrayal.Because if I abandon hope,Who holds it for them? So I carry the war in me—Not as defeat,But as fire.Not as ruin,But as reason. I will not forget.I will not grow numb.I will not silence my heart,To fit the comfort of the ignorant. This pain,Is proof that I’m alive,That my humanity still breathes,That even across oceans,Our souls are boundBy the need to love,To protect,To fight for the voiceless. I carry the war in meBecause they have no choice but to live it.Because the least I can do is feel it,Hold it,Amplify it—Until the world has no choice but to see.Until justice is not a dream,But a debt finally paid.

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