Comments
Loading Dream Comments...
You must be logged in to write a comment - Log In
They stopped shouting. Not the bad shouting—the kind that meant run, hide, don’t breathe. This was different. Grown-ups yelled the same word over and over, like a song. *Over. It’s over.* Over what? The bombs? The hunger? The men with loud boots? Mrs. Kovac from downstairs was crying and laughing at the same time. She grabbed my shoulders and said, “Little one, no more war.” Her hands were shaking. I didn’t understand. War isn’t a thing you can turn off like the tap behind the burned bakery. It’s in the missing roof. In Mama’s cough that never stops. In the empty space where Papa used to sleep. But now… silence. Not the scary silence before the sirens. A soft silence. Like the world is holding its breath, waiting to see if it’s true. If it’s true… does that mean the soldiers won’t come back for the boys? Does that mean Misha’s name won’t just be a whisper I say to the wall at night? I can’t remember his face without the dirt. Maybe now I can try. My stomach still hurts. The war being over doesn’t fill the emptiness, but maybe… maybe the truck with the flour will come. The one with the red cross. Maybe I can walk to the well without listening for the planes. Maybe I can finally wear both shoes, not just the left one tied with string, because I won’t have to run so fast. I’m afraid to believe it. Hope feels like a sharp stone in my hand—I want to hold it tight, but what if it cuts me again? What if tomorrow the sky falls apart? But the birds are starting to sing. I haven’t heard them in a long time. They don’t know about borders or bullets. They just know the noise has stopped. If it’s really over… I’m going to find the spot where our kitchen used to be. Under the broken floorboard, Papa hid a tin box. He said it was for the day the guns went quiet. A biscuit, maybe. A picture. A promise. I think I’ll go look for it tomorrow. Tomorrow. That’s a word I haven’t used in a long time.
Child's thoughts by DeepSeek AI
