The Ash of Silence in 1990s Serbia
written by: David L O’Nan
The smoke didn’t rise in the mantras of peace
It staggered, thick and cruel,
from the shells of homes once steeped
in the prayers of grandmothers—
worn hands over embroidered cloth,
faded Orthodox icons watching
as sons grew into soldiers
with rust in their blood.
Belgrade burned in memory
before it burned in flame.
Not just bridges,
but lullabies.
Not just libraries,
but the soft language
of youth swinging from balconies
before the news blackened it all.
This was a war of cousins
pointing rifles at history,
of boys raised on myths
now feeding those myths through their
living flesh.
A cello wept in Sarajevo,
its bow trembling
as snipers ghosted rooftops—
each shot not just a body,
but a punctuation mark
in a sentence never meant to be screamed!
What do you tell the mother
who walks into a crater
to find a shoe?
Or the girl who kissed
a childhood friend
hours before his uniform
changed his soul?
They say genocide like a word
scrubbed clean in courtrooms,
but the bones know.
The fields know.
The Danube runs redder
on some nights still.
And somewhere,
a man who once carved chess pieces
out of cherry wood
sits alone in a house without windows
and counts the dead
on a string of rosary beads
he no longer believes in.
Because there is no nation
in the screams of the disappeared.
There is no flag
worth the cost of
a child’s final breath.
Only silence,
the kind that doesn’t come
from peace,
but from the absence
of anyone left to scream.
- The Ash of Silence in 1990s Serbia - June 22, 2025
- The News Stand Series - February 1, 2025
- Numbin’ Thorns - March 6, 2024
