Ankica Anchie Biskupović
Moderator 
WHEN A HUMAN REMAINS HUMAN
Do not ask me
which country the dead child belonged to.
The earth beneath him
bears no flag.
Do not ask me
in what language his mother cried his name
as the sky
collapsed into her arms.
Pain has no grammar.
Blood recognizes no borders.
Tears need no translator.
And graves-
they have always spoken
the most precise language of humankind.
I have seen people
turn God into a border,
a homeland into a bullet,
history into a knife
with which to prove
that their wounds are older
than someone else’s.
And I have wondered:
how many centuries must pass
before humanity understands
that a victory
with no one left to celebrate it
is not a victory?
How many homes must burn
before we learn
that the ashes of every home
smell the same?
One day, someone
will open our books
and ask:
Did they know?
Did they know
that behind every window
someone was waiting
for a loved one to return?
That every soldier
was once a child?
That the enemy had a mother
who straightened his collar
before he walked out the door?
Did they know
that the world is not saved
when we defeat one another,
but when we refuse to become
what we hate?
I want the answer to be:
Yes.
We knew.
And so we put down the stone.
We stopped the hand.
We opened the door.
We shared our last piece of bread
with someone
whose name we did not know.
And when they asked us
which side of history we stood on,
we did not raise a flag.
We showed them our hearts.
Because after all the empires,
all the borders,
all the victors
and all the defeated,
only one question will remain:
when it was hardest to be human-
did we remain human?
© 2026 Amb. Ankica Anchie Biskupović
Croatia
