The headlights cut through the dark like a blade, carving our departure into the night. Behind us, the streets were rotting, their fading posters curling away from broken walls as if trying to erase the past. Even the earth itself seemed to be fighting back, exhaling a raw, heavy scent of survival. In that quiet, heavy moment, we felt like nothing. Yet, as we moved, the strangers who shared our streets stood silhouetted in their doorways, watching us go.

Suddenly, the dam broke. I remembered everything all at once.

I remembered the sweet teacher who used to lift me onto her shoulders just so I could get a better view of the planet. And then, there was my mother. I held her one last time as we parted, witnessing something I had never seen before: my mother crying. I never knew that someone so august and serene could harbor the kind of raw, defenseless sadness that children feel. Seeing her walls fall, I stepped into her arms and cried with her. It’s a bitter truth, but that was the day I learned it: people only show you how much they love you when you are about to leave.

The car moved on, passing the abandoned house at the end of the street, its haunted windows shuddering in the wind.

I realized then how much I would miss this beautiful, tragic battlefield. I would miss the boys chasing me across the soccer fields. I would miss the fierce togetherness of our community, and the bright, defiant colors of the women’s clothes. But most of all, I knew I would miss the children of the streets—the barely clothed, scar-footed rags of boys and girls my mother had always tenderly told me to watch over.

As the car pulled away, leaving the quiet people behind in the dark, I leaned toward the glass and whispered a final, desperate wish to them:
“Be happy!”

© Beatriz Esmer