Dear future self,

I write this with hope

That you're better off than me at this very moment.

War-ridden land

The skies are ash and the flames are red

America licks the land with their tongue of hellfire

Flames claim my mother’s once porcelain skin, then ripe flesh

In the country, in that cave, we called home

Fireflies lit the night

Like stars, we could hope to reach for

In the morning, they piled

Their carcasses piled

Much like my people

Father will save us, mother said so

Before those demons claimed her physical entity

The media lies, the adults lie

The ocean could not engulf his steel ship

Nor his steel will

Sweet little sister offers rice balls made of mud, eyes growing dim

As food becomes scarce, her imagination wards off starvation

Her cries, pleas for our mother at night become painfully deafening

Soon, I had to let the flames claim

The essence of innocence

I’ve failed mother, father

Trains speed by, I keep my sister by my side

In her favorite jar of fruit drops

Her ashes mixed with silent tears

Adults pass, whispers of, “Why does no one help him?”

Continuous whispers, continuous footsteps

No one stops

Deafening, maddening whispers

Forsaken

Alone in the crowded metro

Vision fades, my back to the stone-cold pillar

I join the grave of the fireflies with her.

It looks like there won’t be a future self

To look back on our memory

Forsaken, alone

The background slowly fades into nothing.

Sincerely,

A Boy That Could Not Overcome