Omran

Sitting
Sitting in front of my screen
Every day, day-in day-out
Flipping through post after post
Trying to lull off into sleep
Suddenly, I stop
I stare, my soul shivers,
I see him

Watching
He is watching 
He sees me
The boy in the ambulance
He sees me watching him
Face marred with rubble and cuts
His left eye badly hurt
He sits
He stares into nothingness
There is nothing there....

Tired
Little hands on his lap
He just wants to play
He just wants to do what little boys do
He wants to play with his brother 
"I'm so tired" 

Screaming
All around him screaming
Screaming of pain
Screaming of agony
He sits, he watches
He does not know why

Bewildered 
His little bare feet
Dirty and bare
They just swing and hang there
His eyes stare out into nothingness
His face bloodied
He is alone 
Yet he is not alone.

They find his sister
She sits
She stares
She is wearing pink
She is hurt
She stares into the same nothingness

Lost
I sit watching him
We are lost
We sit watching
We sit watching all of them
We sit 
and sit.

The little boy in the ambulance
He is 5 years old
His name is Omran
His brother is badly hurt

We watch
We go to the next post 
We see the cute otter do his flips
We laugh
We carry on

He is still Omran
They are still alive
They have lost their brother
Their hurt brother is dead
His name was Ali
Ali was 10

We sit and wait
Till we see him in our feed again
Till then, we sit, we watch, we laugh
We "like", we "cry", we "love", we "get angry"
We sit and we watch.
Almost robots

He is now "the face of war"
He is now the representative of how badly adults have messed up
He is now the child that is no longer allowed to be a child
Are they both looking into nothingness,
Or can they just see our collective soul?

We watch
We stare
We read
We pray
And sadly, we carry on.

--Mona Banawan




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