Shards of Light (Stories of Breaking and Mending)

I.
She remembers the school bell’s ring
turned to siren’s wail,
her daughter’s textbooks scattered
like fallen leaves in the courtyard.
Now she plants gardens in refugee camps,
teaches children to grow peace
from bullet-riddled soil.

II.
His father’s shop stood forty years
until the mob came with their certainties
and gasoline convictions.
He rebuilt with broader windows,
hung welcome signs in seven languages,
lets sunlight wash away the ash.

III.
They painted swastikas on her door,
but she covered them with butterflies,
each wing a different shade
of human skin.
Her neighbors brought more paint,
until hatred drowned in beauty.

IV.
The blast took his brother
while they prayed.
Now he leads interfaith dialogues,
builds bridges from prayer beads
and shared tears,
finds God in the spaces
between dogmas.

V.
Their walls divided cousins,
made enemies of childhood friends.
But children still threw balls
across razor wire,
until the adults learned
to pass hope instead of hate
across their manufactured lines.

VI.
In the rubble of her mosque,
she found a single prayer rug,
unfolded it in the town square.
Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs
came to sit with her,
until prayer became a language
everyone could speak.

VII.
The revolution ate his family
in neat ideological bites,
but he refused to swallow
the poison of revenge.
Instead, he opened a cafe
where former enemies share bread,
break fast together during Ramadan.

VIII.
We gather now
in circles of surviving,
our scars like constellations
mapping paths to better days.
Our children play in parks
where barriers once stood,
plant gardens in the craters,
sing songs in tongues
their grandparents feared.

Watch how light bends
through prisms of tears
yet always emerges
whole again.
How broken things
can be reformed
with gold in their cracks,
stronger at the mended places,
beautiful because they broke.

We are learning this:
peace is not the absence of difference,
but the presence of love.
Not the silence of conformity,
but the symphony of distinct voices
finding harmony in their contrast.
Every shattered piece
catches light differently,
makes rainbows from rubble,
turns fragments of pain
into mosaics of hope.