A Poem by Leni Marlina
We are the children who do not know laughter,
Amid the ruins of once-warm homes,
We gaze at the sky---now filled only with holes,
A black void devouring every trace of light.
Our mothers and fathers are gone, erased by flames,
By sounds louder than our cries,
Our siblings vanished like mist,
Lost in smoke that never fades away.
Our friends are now just scattered names,
Floating with dust carried by the wind,
We are fragments that cannot be restored,
Running with no sense of where to go.
We have no home, only earth that weeps,
No father, just a silhouette that fades,
No sibling, only shards of memory,
Whispered among remnants untouched by time.
For us, the sky holds no blue,
Only ash clouds our view,
We are no longer children at play---
We are children forgotten by a world that never stops spinning.
But though we have nothing,
We hold something indestructible---our memories,
We are Palestine that cannot be erased,
Because memories are not things that can be destroyed.
We are imprints that cannot be erased,
We are echoes that linger on,
We are countless children unaccounted for,
And though the world may close its ears, we will scream,
For we know we are part of a land that will never die.
Padang, Sumbar, 2023
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Brief Biography
These poems were first composed privately by Leni Marlina in 2023 as part of her personal collection and later revised and published online in 2024. Leni Marlina is an active member of the Indonesian Writers Association, SATU PENA, West Sumatra chapter. She is also a part of the International Community of Poets & Literary Writers (ACC) in Shanghai and serves as a Poetry Ambassador for ACC Shanghai Huifeng International Literary Association. Additionally, Leni is involved with Victoria's Writers Association in Australia. Since 2006, she has been a lecturer in the English Language and Literature Program at the Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Padang.
