When I realized she was no longer breathing, the world lost its shape. Time tore apart. I did not scream. I did not cry immediately. I simply refused. My body rejected the idea of her death.
A mother knows. Before words, before doctors, before certainty. I knew. And I kept holding her, as if warmth alone could bring her back.
After
No one tells you what to do when your child dies on the road. There is no procedure for that. No manual. No organized compassion. There are only averted eyes, heavy silences, and an unspoken question: what happens now?
I was told I could not stop. That I could not turn back. That if I reported her death, I might lose everything—the right to continue, the right to stay, the right even to exist.
So I did something I never believed I was capable of doing.
