I COULD HAVE BEEN THERE, BUT I DIDN'T.. Rabija Hamidovic Zvornik

 
I could have been there too, but I didn't.
Although part of me stayed at the Tuzla Gate,
on May 25, 1995.
Grenade, scream, smoke. I'm lying in a pool of blood.
I'm alive or I'm not, I don't even know.
My bloody hands, my bloody body parts,
motionless bodies around me. Someone's arm and leg are bleeding on me.
I scream and my voice is not heard.
I don't see anything from the smoke of the grenade. I cover my eyes with my hands, not to look at that bloody picture next to me.
I spread the fingers of bloody hands. Through those bloody gaps, I look at bloody bodies. They lie motionless, like bloody dolls. Torn arms, legs, bloody entrails, all around me. A bloody sneaker on a torn leg, a school bag bloody in a torn hand.
Mowed in the flower of youth, when they dreamed of happiness, they had plans, goals.
Who sent the grenade that killed these young lives? Who issues such an order? Why? I am standing next to the Tuzla Gate. The shadows of the dead extend their hands to me, screaming within me.
The names on the board warn: I could have been there too, but I didn't! And I'm with them! I'm here, where I am!
I pay tribute to your youth!
I’m trying to give you a new life with a song. Because you are not dead! Dead are those whose soul you stain!
Let them be ashamed of their living children and the children they killed!

Written by Rabija Hamidovic Zvornik 25/05/2021
Bosnia and Herzegovina