The Questions Children Ask

Our teacher says

every story

should begin

with hope.

I keep wondering

if hope still remembers

the road to our street.

The swing

in the playground

moves only

when the wind comes

looking for children.

My little brother

still asks

whether schools

can grow back

the way trees do

after the rain.

The grown-ups

keep talking

about borders,

victory and history.

Their voices

are so loud

they never hear

the questions children ask.

My friend

used to race me

to the corner shop.

Now,

his football

waits alone

beside a broken wall,

still expecting his feet.

Every night,

my mother counts us

before she sleeps.

Every morning,

she counts us again.

No child should learn

to tell the difference

between thunder

and falling shells.

No mother

should have to

kiss a forehead

as though

it might be

the last time.

The world says

we are tomorrow.

Then let tomorrow

grow old enough

to walk home

without fear.

Leave the iron

to bridges.

Let mornings

begin again

with birds arriving

before sirens.

What Survives The Fire

I have carried you all –

the child

learning to whistle,

the farmer

waiting for rain,

the mother

humming sleep

into restless eyes,

the soldier who was once

someone’s baby.

I have never minded

the weight

of your footsteps,

only the ashes

they leave behind.

Yet every season,

you bury your anger

inside me

and call it history.

You carve

new borders

across my skin,

then ask why rivers

no longer know

where to flow.

You fill my mornings

with sirens

and my nights

with names

children were never

meant to become.

I can grow another forest,

heal a burned field,

persuade flowers

to return to places

that have forgotten their colors.

But I cannot grow

back a childhood.

I cannot replace

the first laugh

war steals,

the dream it buries,

the first home

it teaches

a child to fear.

Stop depriving

children a future.

They have already

paid for the fire

they never ignited.

Leave behind the metals.

Before you stitched

colors into cloth,

you knew one another

by heartbeat.

Remember this

and I will answer

with green mornings,

rivers finding their voices

and children singing

a new song.

Chidimma Ewelukwa is a Nigerian writer whose work explores memory, belonging, identity, and the quiet tensions of everyday life. She has been published in Writer Monk Literary Magazine.