We Who Remain Poem by Natasa To

We are not the voices on the radio.

Not the hands that sign the orders.

We are the ones who sweep the glass

from kitchen floors at dawn.



We boil tea with trembling fingers

when the windows shake again.

We count the seconds between the blasts

like beads upon a broken string.



In the market's hollow skeleton

where fruit once blushed in pyramids,

we trade whispers instead of coins

and news instead of bread.



Our children ask if thunder

always sounds like this.

We tell them no.

We tell them spring will come louder.



At night the sky burns unfamiliar,

stitched with fire instead of stars,

yet still we point and name the heavens

as if nothing has been stolen.



We write our names on scraps of paper,

tuck them into pockets —

not to be remembered by history,

but to be found by someone

who will say them softly.



We are afraid —

yes.

But fear is not the whole of us.



We are the neighbor sharing water.

The stranger pulling stones away.

The mother who hums through sirens.

The father who plants seeds in broken soil.



War may redraw the maps,

may fracture walls and certainty,

but it has not learned

the stubborn grammar of ordinary people.



We remain.



And in remaining,

we resist.