Children of Gray Ashes

We rose in the shockwave’s breath, born from the roar of shattered sky; dust lifted like a thousand broken prayers spilling into the morning. We remember everything— the walls that trembled before they fell, the hands that reached without finding, the names swallowed by the sirens’ climb. We were once the chalk of playground laughter, soft on the ground beneath children’s steps— but war taught us to carry their silence. Fires crowned the horizon and we became its choir. We are the children of gray ashes, scattered through streets that lost their light; cradling the echoes of those uncounted, those unwritten, those caught beneath the turning of nations. Every breath we rise upon remembers who could not. When the shouting stopped, we drifted through skeleton homes, coating cradles that would never rock again. We settled on windowsills where hope once perched, on quiet chairs that still hold the shape of grief. In every corner of the broken city, we became the memory no one chose. War moved on, but we stayed. We are the children of gray ashes, born from the last breath of the innocent; tracing their stories through ruins so they are not forgotten. In our stillness, their voices remain. If you feel us on your hands, know we were once someone’s joy— small feet, warm smiles, dreams untouched by fear. We linger because the world did not linger for them. We are the children of gray ashes, falling slow as remembrance; we fade into the wind with the gentleness they deserved. Carry their names as the sky turns quiet… for we are all that remains when the world forgets to protect them. And still we drift— the last witnesses of what should never have been.