(This poem is addressed to the terrorists who perpetrated the attack on children at Army Public School, Peshawar, Pakistan on 16 Dec 2014, killing more than 130 young students.)
You, who methodically shot innocent children
Even as they trembled in terror and begged for escape
You, who thought nothing of revenge
Even if it meant unimaginable brutality
You, who want the world to cower in fear
Even as the world cannot understand your act
What hurt you so, that you had to kill?
What made you feel so unheard
That you had to make us listen
Through the heart-rending wails of grieving mothers?
What made you feel so rejected
That you had to find a voice
Through the silent pain of benumbed fathers?
Why do you feel so unseen
That you had to prove your presence
By replacing parents’ dreams with nightmares?
I do not have it in me to blame you.
Perhaps, I created you too
By ignoring those beyond my little world.
I cannot bring myself to condemn you.
Perhaps, I killed dreams too
By refusing to engage with the peripheries of my life.
I do not want to punish you.
Perhaps, I marginalised you
By labelling you as undesirable.
I stand in grief.
I mourn in pain.
But I know not, if the grief and pain
Are for the lives lost through those little ones
Or for the lives in you that still stand ostracized.
Did some mother not nurture you in her womb
And dress you with care as she sent you to play?
Did some father not work a little harder
To earn that extra penny for your future?
In killing those children
You bereaved your parents.
They lost you to your choices.
How do we find you back
And integrate you in us?
How do we stop rejecting you
So that terror is not your only option?
Talk to me, abandoned child.
The lost lives tell me,
I cannot heal death with more death.
Are you willing to give life a chance?
