Mother of the vanished
315 Words
They gathered at dawn
when the sky was still the color of gauze.
Their hands cracked from washing sheets and skin,
held photographs that no longer spoke.
No government called their names,
No church offered benediction.
So they made their own liturgy:
a circle of women breathing each other’s sorrow
like air in a shared lung.
They had been nurses, factory workers,
teachers, daughters of small towns
where people still believed in doctors.
They had queued outside hospitals
carrying thermoses and faith,
watching their children sleep
through the fever’s slow arithmetic.
When the bodies cooled,
They became archivists of grief.
They kept records:
hospital bracelets,
empty syringes,
letters stamped confidential.
They learned the language of loss
until it was fluent on their tongues.
At first, they were told to hush—
that they were mistaken,
that the blood had been safe.
Officials smiled like men
who had already decided
what the truth would cost.
But the mothers knew silence
is how contagion thrives.
So they spoke.
In courtrooms,
in newsrooms,
on courthouse steps beneath gray banners.
Their voices trembled but did not break.
They read names into microphones
like incantations against forgetting.
Every syllable, a heartbeat returned
from beneath the soil.
They were mocked.
They were called hysterical.
But history itself began to bend
beneath their persistence.
Files unsealed.
Documents leaked.
The ghosts began to have evidence.
Still, none of it brought the children back.
Graves do not answer subpoenas.
Yet the mothers continued—
planting roses on anniversaries,
lighting candles in hospitals
that had once refused their sons.
They understood something
the world prefers to ignore:
that justice is not a verdict,
but an act of remembrance.
And so, when the last cameras left,
They kept the vigil.
Kneeling by the earth,
speaking softly to the wind,
as if to say—
We are still here.
We have not forgiven.
We will not forget.
- Writer
