By Purvaja Yennamaneni
11th grade | International School of Hyderabad | India
Finalist, Peace and Conflict category

With lines from “A Mother and Baby From Gaza Are Reunited 11 Months After Being Separated at Birth” by Elissa Nadworny, Fatima Al-Kassab and Claire Harbage, a Pulitzer Center reporting project

the baby does not recognize her.
eleven months is a lifetime
when you’ve only had one.
she reaches like memory
searching for something it never held.
the mother watches—
a stranger in the eyes
of the person she made.

she died before the birth.
no light.
no water.
no antibiotics.
a cut made quick beneath a battered ceiling.
what she remembers is this:
leave me. leave me to die. my son is dead.
but then she drew her first breath,
something in their lungs unlocked—
and they came to life.

only—what kind of life?

there are no airstrikes here,
no dust in the teeth of buildings.
they are safe.
but the market smells wrong.
too clean. too quiet.
she lingers,
not because it comforts her,
but because it reminds her
what isn’t here.

the baby smiles.
a little thing. a new action.
her eyes—his.
her laugh—his.
even when the mother holds her,
her heart splits.

this is the wound:
not the taking—
but the halving.

a life split along its spine,
folded like a prayer book
you’re no longer allowed to open.
language turned to shorthand:
a lullaby, an apology,
an order to run.

if she could give her daughter
even half the life they used to have,
she would call that mercy.
but what does half a life grow into?
who teaches a child
what quiet really means
when quiet once meant bombs
catching breath
before they fell?

this is how you mother after war:
you count what's left.
you carry two names inside one mouth.
you fold your child like a letter
you’re scared to send.
you raise her gently—
but with muscle.
not for safety.
for memory.

you watch her live
while asking,
every day,
what part of yourself
you buried
to let her grow.

Purvaja Yennamaneni is a rising senior at the International School of Hyderabad, India. She enjoys reading and writing across a variety of genres, as well as watching movies and listening to music. She wrote her poem for the Peace and Conflict category to reflect on the quieter, more personal costs of war, and is grateful for the chance to give space to a story that stayed with her.

Read more winning entries from the 2025 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.