She was four.
Sitting in her push chair.
The sun was out.
There were pigeons.
People passed, some with ice cream, some with bags of bread.
She had a small toy in her hand.
Plastic. Yellow. A duck maybe.
Her mother was close.
Leaning down, saying something —
It doesn’t matter now.
A moment
split open by steel and fire.
There was no warning.
No siren.
Just a noise that ended the day.
When they found her,
the chair was twisted,
wheels splayed like the legs of a broken insect.
There was no duck.
Just a shoe.
Just blood.
Her father arrived later.
He had run through cordons,
through people shouting his name.
He fell to his knees,
not because of faith,
but because there was no strength left.
He did not weep.
He opened his mouth
and nothing came.
The mother sat beside the wreckage.
They tried to lift her.
She would not go.
She stayed with what was left.
She rocked forward and back.
The air around her filled with things that were not screams.
She was four.
There is no metaphor for that.
No reason.
No lesson.
Just the quiet truth
that men far away
will sleep tonight.
And she
will never grow old.
Broken Author 