The skies feel lonely. The stars won’t cheer me up. The magnificence of the night feels like a betrayal of the universe against me. It still doesn’t feel real. I can’t believe they’re all gone. The bullet shots that took my past and future away are still ringing in my ears. I can’t forget everything and I can’t move on.

Only yesterday I was normal. Now I’m not. I used to have a name. I was Naira Farooq. Now I’m dumped in with the rest, I’m a “refugee”. They look at pictures of me and shake their heads with pity, then they go on with their lives. But I can’t.

I’m only fourteen, but surviving while my family died is a blot on my conscience. It keeps growing and growing with every breath I take. It’s gnawing at my soul, leaving it a scabbed and miserable thing. I miss my family, and sometimes I envy them.

I believe in a better life someday. But this world won’t stop breaking my spirit. Each time hope rises, like a glass phoenix, delicate and beautiful, the cold heartbreak shatters it. I want to believe humanity still exists, but my situation says otherwise. I had a life once, now it’s gone.

I want to know. I want to understand. What does the world have to gain from the loss of our blood? Even the color red takes me back to that moment. My little brother whimpering on the floor, my hands stained with his blood. My father’s voice fading away as he says my name. Why? Did we wrong you? Did we ever hurt you?

My people are getting murdered, my people are dying, and the world celebrates. The developed world cries freedom, they keep asking for more and more rights under the facade of “justice”, “humanity”.

Can I please just ask for one thing? Stop taking innocent lives away. Stop treating us as an unfortunate byproduct of war. I am a person, I have a dream and I want to grow. Please let me grow up.