Song of Peace

When I turned on the BBC this morning,

all I heard was war—

not in one nation,

but in many;

not in one battlefield,

but across a wounded world.

I heard explosions

where children once played,

internet curfews

where voices longed to be heard,

countless casualties

whose names became statistics,

and smoke rising

where homes once held tomorrow.

When I turned on the local news this morning,

all I heard was death—

not only upon broken lands

torn apart by conflict,

but also on elevated roads

where ordinary journeys never reached home,

and beneath relentless rains

that carried away lives, dreams,

and every certainty.

Every headline bore another sorrow.

Every bulletin unveiled another grief.

Every breaking news

broke another heart.

When I turned inward,

all I heard was fear—

fear hidden behind silence,

fear flowing through tears,

fear gathering beneath the mountains of trash

we have left upon the earth.

For we have scarred

not only one another,

but also the world

that has patiently carried us.

Yet when I turned toward hope,

my heart found only one song:

Peace.

For war breeds worry.

The climate demands answers.

Life is too precious

to become another casualty.

Let us sing the song of hope,

not because the world is peaceful,

but because it longs to be.

Let us live—

not alone,

but together.

Let us become fearless hearts

that speak with compassion,

listen with humility,

and choose understanding

before judgment.

Let us replace explosions

with children's laughter;

replace hatred

with healing;

replace suspicion

with trust;

replace walls

with welcoming hands.

Let us plant trees

where smoke has risen,

build bridges

where hatred has divided,

and leave footprints of kindness

where fear once walked.

For the sky belongs to all.

The earth belongs to all.

The future belongs to all.

And peace must belong to all.

This world is vast in beauty,

yet brief in our keeping.

Let us not spend it

counting wars,

mourning disasters,

or fearing tomorrow.

Instead,

let us spend it

building hope,

protecting creation,

embracing one another,

and singing the oldest,

gentlest song

humanity has ever known—

the song of peace.

Amen

Rachel closed her eyes,

not because sleep had found her,

but because grief had.

Drop

after drop

after drop—

the medicine learnt the map of her veins,

while sorrow wandered where no medicine could follow.

For three months

she had carried

a whisper,

a promise,

a heartbeat too small for the world,

yet large enough to become her world.

She had spoken to silence

until silence answered as a child.

Now

her womb

was a chapel

after the candles had gone out.

The doctors

gathered their careful words,

folded their careful hopes,

and left

without touching

the emptiness

they had named.

Rachel counted

not weeks,

not months,

but absences.

A cradle never rocked.

Tiny hands never opened.

A lullaby forgot its own ending.

Only

the drip

kept singing

its patient hymn.

Upon the table

an old journal waited,

its pages breathing

the fragrance

of forgotten prayers.

Someone

had cried

between its lines.

Someone

had loved

beyond language.

She opened it.

The page lifted like a small wing.

One sentence

waited

as though

it had crossed

centuries

to find

her.

All I said was Amen.

The ink

began to bloom.

A young girl

rose from the page—

not crowned,

not painted,

not standing upon stained glass,

but barefoot,

afraid,

holding tomorrow

inside an ordinary womb.

She wrote

of angels

who frightened

more than comforted.

She wrote

of Joseph,

whose silence

was another way

of saying

love.

She wrote

of long roads,

heavy feet,

morning sickness,

warm bread,

shared dates,

Elizabeth's embrace,

and a child

who first kicked

beneath her heart

before he walked

away from her hands.

Rachel

read.

Then

she listened.

Then

she remembered

a life

she had never lived.

The voices

crossed

like rivers.

One

had carried

a child

for three months.

One

had carried

a son

for thirty-three years.

Grief

asked neither

their names

nor their seasons.

It knew

only

that both

were mothers.

The journal

kept unfolding.

The hospital

grew distant.

The drip

became

a metronome

for memory.

The pages

became

another heartbeat.

And somewhere

between

an empty womb

and an empty tomb,

between

loss

and love,

between

question

and surrender,

two women

found

the same word—

the smallest prayer,

the deepest wound,

the quietest victory—

Amen.

postmortem

She lay upon the dissection table,

her heart laid open,

her blood grown cold—

while her words still bled

through an endless winter of silence.

The memories gathered around him,

staring with knitted brows

and lips forever sealed,

as though they knew

what neither of them had spoken.

With trembling hands

he began to read

the unseen history of her soul,

each wound a sentence,

each scar a forgotten chapter,

each vein preserving

the map of a love

that had outlived its own heartbeat.

The scattered pieces of her mind

overflowed with love,

yet drifted past him

like rain withheld by reluctant clouds—

a monsoon that never found

the courage to fall.

The showers of her dreams

remained knotted

within the sacred rites

of duty, silence, and surrender.

Each hope she buried alive

returned as an echo,

circling the shores

of a mesmerizing lake of pain,

where her passion endured

not as freedom,

but as captivity.

Her poems waited patiently,

page after page,

for a single answer,

for the warmth of a listening heart.

But he searched too late,

holding every verse

like an unfinished confession.

The postmortem was complete.

The body revealed nothing

the heart had not already endured.

Only then did he realize

that love leaves no evidence

beneath the surgeon's blade.

It hides instead

between unfinished poems,

unfallen rain,

sealed lips,

and the key

he never knew he carried.