Where Children Sleep in Rubble

Where Children Sleep in Rubble

by ZIA ULLAH KHAN

Where lullabies used to drift like jasmine in the night,

now silence settles heavy—

thick with ash,

sharp with grief.

The stars still blink above Gaza,

but they look away now,

too ashamed to witness

what fire has done to the innocent.

In cradles of broken brick,

children sleep—

not in beds,

but in the arms of ruin,

their dreams trembling beneath collapsed ceilings

and the cracked cries of mothers

whose arms are empty

but whose hearts refuse to forget.

A teddy bear blackened by soot

lies beside a crushed notebook.

A crayon survives—red,

like the balloon a boy once drew

before the sky betrayed him.

The ground is no longer earth—

it is memory,

it is names carved in dust,

it is footprints that end too suddenly.

Can you hear them?

The soft sighs of little ones

who still whisper stories to one another

between slabs of concrete,

believing that somehow,

somewhere,

the world is listening.

But the world scrolls on.

It counts numbers,

not names.

It calls it "conflict"—

not murder.

It says "unfortunate"—

not unforgivable.

Yet in the rubble,

a girl hums to herself

a tune no drone can drown.

She wraps her baby brother

in the last piece of her school uniform.

She still remembers how to love

in a place that forgot how to live.

So let the world cover its ears.

Let its eyes glaze over with politics.

We will still write.

We will still mourn.

We will still rage.

And we will still remember—

where children sleep in rubble,

but rise as legends in our poems.