The Bread of Her Womb

I do not remember the last time I saw the sun rise without trembling.

There, beneath the rusted sheet of our broken rooftop, I count—

One… two… three… twenty-one.

They breathe like hunger itself.

My sons. My womb’s fruit. Twenty-one twin-born sons—

Each with a face identical to his brother’s, but eyes… oh, the eyes never lie.

Some shimmered with hope. Others with rage. Most with hollow silence.

And I, their mother, fed them dreams—

Dreams when there was no bread.

I had no husband, no coins, and no name worth whispering to the wind.

Just breasts that dried long ago, and arms wide enough to cradle the apocalypse.

The neighbors called me mad.

Mad to have borne them.

Mad to raise them.

Mad to live.

But mad women raise empires, and sane men destroy them.

Let that be carved on your tombstones.

They came in a wave, my children, a curse disguised as a blessing.

Seven pairs, one after the other, no doctor, no nurse—

Just pain, and blood, and my fingernails digging into dirt and desperation.

The final pair were the quiet ones.

The ones who stared too long at the sky, as if waiting for it to fall.

The world, meanwhile, discovered new ways to eat itself.

Men—scholars, generals, politicians, beasts in ties—

Unveiled another missile to split the moon.

Another drone to orphan the children I never bore.

Another lie to paint their poison as peace.

Men with stomachs full of feasts and mouths full of phrases like “economic strategy”

And “acceptable casualties.”

But I… I just needed a crust of bread.

I scavenged.

I begged from the rats.

I wept in the alleyways of progress.

My knees bore holes from prayer, my throat cracked from lullabies sung to silence the hunger that gnawed at my twenty-one miracles.

Each morning, I divided shadows.

A sliver of ash.

A breath of cold.

A promise of maybe.

I saw them shrink, my sons.

Ribs like xylophones played by famine.

Eyes glazed in unsaid goodbyes.

That morning—the worst of all—I found a single piece of bread, stale and fossilized, behind the butcher’s bloody bin.

It was green.

It was mold.

It was life.

I ran home like a thief of hope, and my sons—

They waited, forming a circle of silence around me.

Their mouths did not open.

Their hands did not stretch.

They simply… waited.

I held the bread above my head like a relic.

“This,” I said, “will save us.”

And for a moment, I believed it.

A moment that broke me.

Because as I looked into each of their identical faces,

I knew.

There was not enough.

My heart turned into a courtroom.

Which son would eat?

Which son would wait another day to die?

Which son… would I love more?

Love. What a cruel invention.

Even God, in his supposed perfection, played favorites.

Cain knew that.

I knew it now.

But then, the horror grew.

Not from famine.

But from what I saw in their eyes.

Not tears.

Not pleading.

But understanding.

My sons stood, twenty-one of them, and began to walk toward me, in perfect synchronization,

As if puppets pulled by the same invisible sorrow.

They circled me.

Then stopped.

And the youngest—perhaps he was born a second later—stepped forward.

He took the bread from my hand.

And fed it to me.

“Mother,” he said.

“You fed us for years with your soul.

Today, we feed you.”

And one by one, each son took a piece of himself—

His flesh, his spirit, his innocence—

And gave it to me.

In my mouth, it tasted like iron and memories.

Like the echoes of lullabies.

Like love.

I fell.

Not from hunger.

But from awe.

Their shadows lengthened.

Their faces faded.

Their bodies became dust.

And I, the poor mother of a nation of famine, was full again.

But the world—

The world continued building its bombs,

Worshipping its weapons,

Mocking love as weakness.

Men invented the cure for death,

But forgot how to kiss their mothers.

They traveled to Mars,

But never to their own living rooms,

Where their mothers cried into silence.

Today, I write this with a trembling hand and a full belly.

My sons no longer speak.

They are gone.

But I hear them in every gust of wind that tastes like bread.

Let the world know:

A mother without gold, without guns, without favor—

Fed twenty-one sons

With nothing but the marrow of her love.

And modern man?

He devours the world

With teeth too blunt to chew truth.

He studies stars but forgets the womb.

I laugh now, bitter and ancient,

Because they call me myth.

They say a woman could never survive such hunger.

That love cannot fill a stomach.

That bread cannot feed twenty-one sons.

Let them say it.

Let them mock.

But I tell you—

I bore them.

I fed them.

I buried them.

And still… I live.

Because no missile, no machine, no man

Can match a mother’s hunger

For her children’s breath.

Let the world burn.

Let it rain ash.

Let cities fall and empires rot.

But remember me.

The nameless mother.

With twenty-one sons

And one crust of bread.

And remember this:

She won.