Words by Michelle Fitzgerald // illustration by Ciel Chen
“I don’t want to wear my shoes!” My daughter spits at me through gritted teeth, her fists clenched.
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A malnourished baby, skeletal, with dark hollow eyes, stares back at me through my brick shaped screen.
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“Eww yuck!” My daughter hurls her bamboo plate onto the floor, it shatters into pieces, the contents mushed into every crack and crevice of the floorboards.
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A mother holds a bloodied bundle, child-sized, cocooned in a dirty sheet.
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My daughter, stiff as a board, her feet cemented to the ground, completely unmoveable, refuses to climb into her carseat as we enter the fortieth minute of this standoff.
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A sleeping toddler startles, over and over, cuddle-curled protectively by her father as bombs blast continuously nearby.
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My daughter, afraid of the dark, calls out to me, within seconds I am by her side. We co-sleep together for the rest of the night, safe within the walls of our suburban yellow brick house.
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The silhouette of a young girl, trapped in a blaze, burns alive.
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My daughter cups my chin and tells me she loves me in the clearest voice I’ve ever heard from her tiny toddler lips.
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Three children, in wheelchairs, roll their way through a Canadian airport, now orphans, displaced and lost like the limbs blown from their bodies.
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“I don’t want Peppa Pig!” My daughter sharply squeals at me, catapulting the remote at my cheek.
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Children huddle together in a tent, brown dirt for a floor, a tiny phone screen in hand, lighting up their joyful faces as Miss Rachel sings, counts and dances. The children sing, count and dance in unison, amongst the crumbled rubble and debris.
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I dress my daughter in her uniform for her first day of kindergarten as she poses with a handmade board proudly announcing this milestone.
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A mother holds her bluish, lifeless baby. They are one of 14000 babies predicted to die in the coming days.
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My daughter screams in sheer distress, her Elsa dress freshly splattered in pasta sauce. The dress she refused to remove before dinner, now processing the consequences of her actions as I negotiate against all odds for her to take it off so I can soak it in stain remover.
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A screaming toddler is ripped from her Mother, buckled into a black van adorned with three terrifying letters I.C.E.
I cannot comprehend what I’m seeing.
From all corners of the globe.
There is no reprieve.
I am awake in the place in the place where women die.
This Jenny Holzer line turns over and over in my mind.
In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy.
My dreams have become violent. Blood red images flash behind my closed eyes.
Most nights, I wake up crying.
The pit in my stomach deepens.
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.”
I cannot hold the children.
They will not survive.
All I can do is hold my own.
Mothers, hold your children.
Throw away everything that separates us from our instincts.
Mothers hold your children.
For those who’ll never be free.
Mothers hold your children.
Let it all burn to the ground.
So we can start again.
Let our old systems perish.
Capitalism.
Patriarchy.
Let them go, release them all, heartily.
Mothers hold your children.
It’s revolutionary.
