Silence of War by RAHEES IBN RAFEEQ

War did not begin with bullets.
It began
with silence.

The silence of leaders
who shook hands over burning maps.
The silence of nations
watching children become smoke
beneath collapsing skies.

I saw a boy once—
his eyes carried the weight of ruined cities.
He held a broken toy tank
like it was the last surviving memory
of childhood.

No birds flew that morning.
Even the wind
was afraid to speak.

The streets were filled
with unfinished lives:
a mother’s prayer
still hanging in the air,
a father’s footsteps
that never returned home,
tiny shoes sleeping beneath dust and stone.

Tell me—
how does humanity sleep
while sirens sing lullabies of death?

The moon looked down
like a guilty witness.
Stars hid themselves
behind curtains of smoke.
And God…
perhaps even Heaven wept
that night.

War is strange.

It teaches iron
to tear through flesh,
but never teaches humans
how to heal a heart.

A soldier pulled the trigger,
yet somewhere
another mother buried her universe.

And after the fire,
after the screams,
after history wrote another chapter in red—

came the silence.

Not peace.
Never peace.

Just silence.

The kind that lives
inside empty classrooms,
inside shattered hospitals,
inside the trembling voice
of a child asking:

“Will tomorrow sound like bombs too?”

One day,
the world will build monuments
for the dead.
Politicians will give speeches.
Flags will rise.
Anthems will echo proudly.

But no monument
will ever be taller
than the grief
of a mother holding
a name instead of a child.

So listen carefully—

when war becomes silent,
it does not mean suffering ended.

It only means
the world has grown
used to it