You are not well enough to go to school yet…
My mother’s litany of complaints was familiar.
Background noise.
Today it was about how I haven’t recovered enough
To go back to school.
On most days, it was about saying my prayers
And wearing the hijab and getting home before dark
And playing with the boys
And looking too long at the one mobile phone
We three sisters shared.

I hurriedly pulled on my schoolbag and ran out the door.
She was too unwieldy to chase me down the street,
I knew from experience.
Her knee had been acting up these days.
Sometimes I asked Allah to make it better,
But sometimes I kept quiet about it,
Especially on the days she hit my sisters.

I was the youngest and no one had hit me. Yet.
I knew it was just a matter of time. 
Anyway, today was not the day to worry.I was going to see my best friends again.
Two days of being home with a fever were two days too much.
I could see the school in the distance.
I still had more than a kilometre to go
But I could see that something was different.
Wrong, maybe?

Children seemed to be rushing out.
Commotion at the gates.
I looked at my watch. I was late
But not late enough for it to be break time.
10.23. The numbers blinked at me.
And for a second, before I looked back up,
I had a premonition that the world, as I knew it, was about to change.

I saw it hit the school and felt its invisible hands
Pushing me off-kilter.
And then there was a ghastly silence.
I watched the world turn shades of grey and brown
And tasted smoke, sand and salt.
My ears popped, and the feeling in my chest 
Grew into a wailing panic.

I didn’t realise until much later that
It was my voice crying out loud.

I sank to my knees and continued to watch
As yet something else hit my school
Adding fire to fire, scorching my friends, my sisters.
I threw away my schoolbag.
It felt so much heavier than it ever had, a stifling anchor.
I hitched up my dress to run towards the school,
Screaming my sisters’ names.

I don’t know who tackled me
And dragged me down.
But I heard the familiar voice
And tasted her familiar tears,
Her voice now spewing a litany of prayers.

Context: In April, a prompt turned up in one of my poetry groups. A chance encounter, it said. I wasn't planning to write poetry that day. The words refused to flow. I felt like the screams of children across the world were being silenced. And it somehow felt wrong to continue creating art in a world that may not need it. But something in this prompt made me think back to February 28, when the elementary school in Iran was bombed. And that something told me to write. As a witness. As a reminder. As remembrance. And more importantly, lest we forget...