The silence after war is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
It pressed against my ears as I woke, the kind of quiet that doesn’t mean peace…just absence. The smell of smoke still hung thick in the house. My clothes reeked of ash and blood and wet earth. My throat ached from crying, though I couldn’t remember the last time tears actually came out.
I sat up in bed and just stared. The ceiling above me had a crack running through it…thin, jagged, splitting straight down the middle. Kind of poetic, really. Everything in this house was cracked now. Including me.
Mom hadn’t left her room since… since that night. Since Dad didn’t come home.
When I pushed her door open, the same scene greeted me. curtains drawn, sheets bunched around her body like a cocoon, eyes staring at the ceiling. She did
