Don't Tell Me It Will Be Okay. Poem by Frankline Shem O.

Don't tell me it'll be okay.
You were not there
when my brother's head rolled past me like a ball.
We didn't bury him—
there was nothing left to dig with.
Nothing left to dig.

I am ten.
I have killed rats,
eaten paper soaked in soup water,
watched a mother
feed her newborn mud.
We pretended it was porridge.
The baby died anyway.

The sky doesn't drop rain here.
It drops iron.
It drops mothers with arms missing,
fathers with no face,
children holding limbs like broken dolls.

I don't sleep.
I listen.
For drones, for boots,
for the sound of another home turning to bone.
I've learned the rhythm of bombs—
how they pause,
how they suck in a breath before murder.

School is gone.
Teacher is gone.
Language is gone.
We speak in silence now
and screams.

My friend Ahmed burned
in the truck full of wheat.
We weren't stealing.
We were hungry.
Tell that to the tank.
Tell that to the news cameras,
if they even bother coming.

Tell God
we are still waiting for Him to show up.
He was supposed to live here.
He left with the reporters.
We haven't seen Him since.

There is no news here.
Only flies.
Only smoke.
Only the names
you'll never fit into your headlines.

Don't write headlines about us.
Don't frame our death between commercial breaks.
Don't pretend you knew our names
when you can't even pronounce them.

Don't speak about us
if you've never carried your sister
in a plastic bag
because you had no coffin.

Don't send prayers
if you've never screamed
into the stomach of the earth
begging her not to open again.

Don't tell me it'll be okay.
It won't.
And I'm still here.
Still breathing. Still burning. Still here.