WHEN THE STATE DISAPPEARED
When the State disappeared,
silence took command of the roads.
Villages slept with one eye open,
listening for engines, boots, and gunfire.
Markets that once sang with bargaining voices
now whisper in fear,
and children learn the language of hiding
before they learn to write their names.
Into the vacuum stepped shadows—
men without mercy,
flags without compassion,
laws written in bullets and ash.
Farmers abandoned their fields,
traders counted losses instead of profits,
and mothers prayed for sons
who should have returned at sunset.
Where protection failed,
terror planted its own authority;
where governance weakened,
fear became the new governor.
Yet the land remembers peace.
The soil still waits for laughter,
for schools instead of camps,
for soldiers of justice, not soldiers of terror.
And one day,
when the State returns not in uniforms alone
but in fairness, protection, and hope,
the people will reclaim their nights.
Until then, the wind carries one question
across northern plains and burning towns:
Who guards the people
when the guardians vanish?
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