refuge ➳

🏳️

There had been days, a long, long time ago, when I had viewed life as a series of events with its own bright moments and inevitably, its own dark ones. But that was Before. Now I tended to perceive situations with an unblinking, cynical eye, seeing everything as mere variations of the menacing darkness.

We have to be optimistic, especially at a time like this, my mother had tried to reason that fateful night, shaking my shoulders hard, as though if she did so, optimism and positivity could somehow spew from her trembling fingers and into my convulsing soul.

She had every reason to be anxious, of course. I remembered that night quite clearly, with shattering clarity. It was when we were escaping from our house after the first few bombs had been spat onto the unsuspecting earth. We, my parents and I, had awoken, confused and terrified. At the time, we were in the comfort of our quilts and the switched-off lights, and a moderate breeze had been teasing and pushing at the curtains, like a kitten with a ball of yarn. But through the haze of comfort, I knew there was something out there. Something out in the night that would change my life as I had known it forever. My father had got up to investigate, obviously unable to handle the tension gnawing within him. With bated breaths, my mother and I had watched him go downstairs after she had given futile arguments to make my father stay.

I remembered my eyes, uneasy and swollen, as they glanced at the moon outside. The moon was perfectly round and perfectly bright, as though everything was all right.

Within a few moments, another bomb had come crashing down, this time just a few inches from where my father had stood out on the front porch.