By Rishika Ganguly
They say war comes loud.
But it doesn’t.
It comes in the quiet—
in the way a father stops singing at dinner,
in how a mother folds laundry slower,
waiting for a knock that isn’t a child coming home.
Did it always feel like this?
Like the air is heavy with names
no one dares to say aloud?
Yes.
I remember when my brother stopped smiling.
He left with fire in his chest
and came back in a wooden box
with no eyes left to cry.
I watched my city forget itself—
bricks bleeding where windows once held light,
schools becoming shadows,
playgrounds swallowed whole by silence.
But what about peace? Doesn’t she fight back?
She does.
She fights differently.
She stitches skin while bombs tear it.
She waits in the last hug before goodbye,
in the trembling hands passing bread to strangers.
I met her once—
in a shelter,
when a boy shared his only blanket with a girl
from the other side.
They didn’t know history.
Only cold.
Only kindness.
Do you think we deserve her?
I don’t know.
But I think we need her.
More than borders, more than victory parades—
we need her voice
to drown out the ones that teach us to hate.
Some nights, I talk to her.
When the world sleeps
and the smoke thins just enough to see stars.
I ask if she’s still coming.
She never answers loud.
But once,
a child handed me a flower
from the cracks of a ruined wall,
and I think that was her saying:
“I never left.
You just stopped looking for me.”
