slip-sliding away…..

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The children will grow up.
At least,
some of them will.
Those who aren’t collateral damage
in a war of grown-ups,
too blinded from the impact
their decisions have
on real humans
who aren’t their own family members.

The children will grow up.
At least,
those who aren’t obliterated;
limbs thrown callously
by the impact
of bombs falling indiscriminately
on a civilian population
imprisoned for decades,
unable to
move
laugh
live
without the domineering gaze
of hostile soldiers
watching their every move,
looking for any excuse to
harass
insult
shoot.

The children will grow up –
no mother
nor father.
No normality,
as childhood is snatched
before their very eyes,
and they age rapidly…
old beyond their years,
repositories
of generational trauma;
a people dispossessed
of
land
liberty
livelihood…
replaced with
heartbreak
humiliation
helplessness,
as the (not so) civilised world
watched on,
the situation
too “complicated”
to take a moral stand;
the oppression denied
– pain not valid –
simply because
the victims did not
look like them
talk like them
believe what they believed.

The children will grow up.
Their lives painted by tragedy.
And we,
on the other side of the world,
will get to say
where we stood
and
what we did
while this all unfolded.

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Video source: Original unknown, but posted by mfsukkarieh

Image source: Original unknown, but posted by Sanel Ramić