Waifs in Peril

And should you walk

across borders stitched with razor-wire seams, with feet hardened into sun-cracked riverbeds, what might you feel while villages of bread ovens, playgrounds, and prayer linger only as smoke stains upon memory, and dreams hang from shattered windows like clothing abandoned after a sudden storm?

Looking skyward,

the world's moral compass spins like a damaged weather vane. Politicians point in all directions except responsibility. What prepares a child to learn that paperwork can weigh more than a heartbeat, that a passport becomes a life jacket, and that some drown long before water touches them, pulled beneath the undertow of indifference?

"Please,"

cries the waif carrying a life in a torn backpack, find me one doorway wider than suspicion, one night where fear does not arrive first. Yet nations stand ashore debating currents and costs while humanity slips quietly beneath the surface. Compassion flickers like a candle inside a hurricane; mercy trickles through gates of suspicion while fear floods entire continents.

Still,

through dust, sea spray, and the acid rain of broken promises, a child reaches toward a horizon forever retreating, where freedom shimmers like rain upon desert asphalt, close enough to see, too distant to touch. The child points forward. The mother follows. The father limps. And hope, frail as a final match cupped in trembling hands, refuses, somehow refuses, to die.