Children who no longer play (Marcella Boccia)
Once, their laughter was light,spilling like marigolds across the courtyards,hands clapping, feet chasing shadowstoo swift to be caught.Now the streets are mute,hollowed by the hush of abandoned games.The air is heavy with things unsaid,with echoes of names never called home again.They have learned the language of sirens,the rhythm of distant gunfire,how to flinch without moving,how to dream without closing their eyes.The sky, once their boundless roof,now presses down like a silent witness,watching as childhood folds itselfinto something unspoken, something gray.Who will teach them to run again,to lose themselves in the windwithout fear of never returning?Who will give them back the daysthat slipped through their fingerslike sand through the cracks of time?Somewhere, a skipping rope lies still,a ball rests where it was last kicked,and the wind carries only dust—never the sound of children at play.
