Bunker Kid

I was born into a war zone.
My mother labored underground,
inside a bunker that shook with impact.
Old women held her down and held me up.
There was no doctor,
no midwife—
only hands that had already buried too much.

I don’t know why my parents made me during the war.
Maybe they made me before the sirens,
before the sky learned how to fall apart,
when days were still called days
and nights were quiet enough to breathe in.

My mother never sang to me.
Maybe she didn’t know the songs.
Maybe she didn’t have the strength
to lift her voice above the bombs,
above the engines tearing the air open.

I learned the language of war early—
the whistle before the strike,
the pause,
the blast,
the way the walls answered back.
The roar of jets became weather.
Fear became ordinary.

Food was counted.
Hope was thinner.
I sucked at my mother’s breast
and found nothing there.
No milk.
Only bone and apology.

They fed me white powder
stirred into warm water.
I learned to live on that.
I learned not to cry.
Crying wastes energy.

I don’t know when the war will end.
I don’t know when the door will open.
I don’t know what peace looks like
or if I will recognize it.
I don’t know when I will taste real milk,
or fresh food,
or air that isn’t afraid.

I am a bunker kid.
I was born surviving.
I don’t know what comes after that.