Between the Rubble and the Sky: A Bitter Ceasefire

Between the Rubble and the Sky: A Bitter Ceasefire

The silence is uneasy. A ceasefire, they call it.
But silence is not peace. It is waiting.

Families move like ghosts through streets they once knew,
following the map in their minds,
turning corners that no longer exist.

A child tugs at her mother’s sleeve.
“Are we home yet?”
The mother swallows, her throat tight.
“Yes, habibti,” she whispers,
but her eyes are searching—searching for proof.

They arrive. But home is gone.
The kitchen table where her father taught her to read? Splintered.
The doorway where her brother stood on his first day of school? Dust.
Only the walls remain, broken ribs of a body long collapsed.

The girl crouches, fingers tracing something half-buried in the ash.
A stuffed rabbit—ears singed, one eye missing.
She cradles it like a wounded bird.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, to herself or the rabbit, no one knows.

The air is thick with things unsaid.
Fathers pat each other’s backs, gripping harder than needed.
Mothers press shaking hands to their faces,
as if holding in the wail of a world undone.
Someone lifts a brick, another follows.
They rebuild, not because they believe in peace,
but because they have no other choice.

In distant halls, men trace lines on a map.
Trump. Netanyahu. Their names spoken like weather forecasts.
Tomorrow, the sky may open again.
Or it may hold.

For now, they live. They grieve. They lay bricks with trembling hands.
A boy kicks a ball through the rubble.
A woman hums an old song as she sweeps dust from what used to be a doorway.
A child sleeps with a stuffed rabbit held close.

And in these fragile, stubborn moments,
there is defiance.
Not in the absence of fear,
but in the refusal to let fear win.