“I was seven Last Night”
I was seven years old last night. I wanted to be a vet. I didn’t want to be a soldier or a president — just someone who could touch the quiet and visit the animals in the forests near my home.
Mama said I should sleep, but the stars were still awake, scattered like precious gems on the dark sky above my town. I pressed my face to the cold windowpane, trying to count them, but they kept trembling, as if frightened too be counted.
Papa had promised me we’d go to the park again when the weather turned warm and this is all over. I’d ride my old chopper that belonged to dad when he was seven; the one with the bent handles like a Harley. Dad would chase me till we both fell laughing into the grass before all this happened. I liked the way the world smelled after rain. It always felt like God had washed it clean, ready for another try.
When the sirens started, I thought they were part of a dream.
Mama’s arms wrapped around me, I could hear her heart beating fast; dum-dum! dum-dum!
The world outside howled; a wind, a growl, a noise from the deep.
I wanted to ask, why do they hate us? But the words got lost in the thunder.
There was light then. A light too bright for night. The kind that doesn’t belong to our world.
And then, quiet again. Not the kind that means safety, but the kind that holds everything, every prayer, every tear, every unspoken why.
I’m not cold now. I’m not afraid.
The stars are closer than ever, and I wonder if they know my name.
Mama is sleeping somewhere below, her heart aching in that endless human way. Tell her I’m sleeping now, to keep my chopper until I wake. Tell her when we meet again; we will laugh with a gentle heartbeat.
The town is erased from my memory now with the guns, bombs, planes, drones and tanks.
But stories don’t die that easily. They echo, even in ruins.
I was going to grow tall, learn English, study biology. I had a notebook with drawings of foxes, mushrooms, birds, moons, comets trailing their long silver hair. Maybe someone will find it in the rubble. Perhaps they’ll know I was there.
And I ask the same question every soul asks when the world forgets itself: What is the meaning of all this?
Men build guns and drones and tanks and planes, but none of it follows them here. No one has power here. Only the things we gave without return. The love the affection the kindness.
People are clutching photographs. They are still looking for purpose in the ruins. Mama and Papa hold my photo, my first day at school, they are kneeling beside the broken room where I will always be seven.
I was seven years old last night.
Now I am part of something older than time —
the silence between stars,
the heartbeat of the world when no one is listening,
the small, unending hope that someone will finally learn
what it means to be human.
“If someone dies, will they live again?
All the days of my hard service
I will wait for my renewal to come.”
— Job 14:14 (NIV)
Image by Copilot