24/12/2025
My Girl
This is my girl. My girl is just eighteen. And my girl has a girl of her own.
My girl has seen it all, more than most do in a lifetime, and when she cries, her tears don’t fall, they flood.
A pool of gallons, salty and heavy,
just like Alice in Wonderland, except there’s no bottle to save those around her. Instead, we could all just drown.
But still, my girl says “Good things will come.” She says it with the kind of voice that makes you believe her. And as long as I hold her hand, she says, she won’t cry no more.
This photo was taken in the Pleiades office in October 2024. H. was 18 years old at the time, she is a Macedonian citizen who was previously taken to Syria as minor and later repatriated. After 3 years of psychosocial support, in which she participated through the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund funded project, she impacted my career immensely and I will forever hold her hand.
Special gratitude to the team of the Initiative for European Perspective and Elena Milenkoska-Mihailovska
