Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
The Questions Children Ask
Our teacher says
every story
should begin
with hope.
I keep wondering
if hope still remembers
the road to our street.
The swing
in the playground
moves only
when the wind comes
looking for children.
My little brother
still asks
whether schools
can grow back
the way trees do
after the rain.
The grown-ups
keep talking
about borders,
victory and history.
Their voices
are so loud
they never hear
the questions children ask.
My friend
used to race me
to the corner shop.
Now,
his football
waits alone
beside a broken wall,
still expecting his feet.
Every night,
my mother counts us
before she sleeps.
Every morning,
she counts us again.
No child should learn
to tell the difference
between thunder
and falling shells.
No mother
should have to
kiss a forehead
as though
it might be
the last time.
The world says
we are tomorrow.
Then let tomorrow
grow old enough
to walk home
without fear.
Leave the iron
to bridges.
Let mornings
begin again
with birds arriving
before sirens.
What Survives The Fire
I have carried you all –
the child
learning to whistle,
the farmer
waiting for rain,
the mother
humming sleep
into restless eyes,
the soldier who was once
someone’s baby.
I have never minded
the weight
of your footsteps,
only the ashes
they leave behind.
Yet every season,
you bury your anger
inside me
and call it history.
You carve
new borders
across my skin,
then ask why rivers
no longer know
where to flow.
You fill my mornings
with sirens
and my nights
with names
children were never
meant to become.
I can grow another forest,
heal a burned field,
persuade flowers
to return to places
that have forgotten their colors.
But I cannot grow
back a childhood.
I cannot replace
the first laugh
war steals,
the dream it buries,
the first home
it teaches
a child to fear.
Stop depriving
children a future.
They have already
paid for the fire
they never ignited.
Leave behind the metals.
Before you stitched
colors into cloth,
you knew one another
by heartbeat.
Remember this
and I will answer
with green mornings,
rivers finding their voices
and children singing
a new song.
Biography
Chidimma Ewelukwa is a Nigerian writer whose work explores memory, belonging, identity, and the quiet tensions of everyday life. She has been published in Writer Monk Literary Magazine.
