Under the Shadow of Loss

My mind resists writing, my heart is a mass of pain and ruin, wandering is my doctrine, and my body barely moves, like a puppet controlled by a series of commands and techniques. I feel completely numb to every feeling. Perhaps life has increased the dosage of the anesthesia this time, making me seem as though I’m undergoing a serious surgery that could end in my demise, but I feel nothing, sleeping like a calm angel, waiting to wake up, where pain begins to flow through my body. Then I start to remember: Who am I? Where am I? And what has happened to me? I cry, I scream from the intensity of the pain… This is me, Asmaa, undergoing the most brutal surgery, called genocide, anesthetized by a large dose called displacement, and many attempts to survive. I’m waiting to wake up from its effects so I can mourn the loss of my friends, my home, and my happy memories. I weep for the life I had that ended too soon for reasons unknown to me. Loss has spread through my body like a blot of ink that refuses to stop expanding and growing, leaving behind a thick blackness as if there was never a place for white on the page of life. Oh life, isn’t it time to ease the severity of this anesthesia? Isn’t it time to show some kindness to me, your daughter, with your gentle hands? Why is it that everywhere I turn, I’m met only with a weapon pointed at me called loss? Don’t worry if you want to fire at me this time, for I am under anesthesia. Fire now… now, I won’t feel it… now.