With a Glass of Milk and a Choco Chip Cupcake, I write.

Written by Tia

The air around me envelops itself with an illusory sense of stillness, like water floating, unmoving. Nowhere to head to and nowhere to go back, this water is floating, frozen, in its present state. 

The clock keeps moving. Days keep passing. My mobile phone keeps blowing up with news headlines of infrastructure being hit, debris falling, people outside this bubble of safety in which I am confined, dying.

Civilians losing lives with dead birds falling from the sky.

I witness. My mind races. My body is stuck in a vigilant state. 

I am trying to be as alright as I can be. Jogging on the treadmill of this present that keeps changing its pace every minute.

I am trying to be as good as I can be in this uncertain pause between the present and future. 

But the real question is: 

Do I deserve to be in this bubble? 

Do I deserve to be promised safety?

Helplessly, I watch chaos unfold while promises of defence and safety blind me  from the political truths of this world.

I wonder if this was always the case – the gilded cage of gatekept opportunity which my privilege gives me. 

I wonder if I was always blinded from the reality that hid behind money, glamour, safety, media, and praises. 

I wonder if I was always inside a bubble.

I wonder if the war is cracking it. 

Blood is flowing beyond the expanses that my naked eye can see. Explosions are growing louder, beyond the decibels my ears can hear. 

I know thousands are being sacrificed. I can feel it.

I can feel it in the gaps and pauses of words that string reassurances together, keeping everyone quiet and steady. I can feel the chaos overflowing in the curated words I see on my screen – words crafted to not worry my nerves.

Even if everything is alright, nothing is.

Disaster is ensuing. 

Systems are breaking down, in the form of glass bubbles forming cracks, holding themselves together save they shatter into tiny pieces over us.

Who pays the price for war?

Truly.

Is it statistics of economic growth and infrastructure?

Is it the money being drained away in the use of weaponry?

Or is it… children?

Children – of all living forms.

Their families. Their generations.

Their lives.

Their promise of hope.

Their right to safety.

Is that perhaps the price for war..?

Even when war lurks around this bubble I am in, and uncertainty hugs my body, I can still get myself a glass of milk and a choco chip cake to have.

In fact, I have been promised  more.

But.

Is it so difficult for everyone to be promised their glasses of milk and a choco chip cupcake?

Is it?

I do not think so.