Point of View - By Dina Qaisara

Written By: Dina Qaisara

Category: Short Story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In the poignant short story "Point of View," Dina Qaisara explores the world through the eyes of a newborn. As part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, this submission offers a unique narrative, capturing the essence of life from its very first breath. Dina's work is a testament to the power of perspective and the complexities of familial relationships, reflecting the broader theme of the competition.

About the Work

Dina Qaisara's "Point of View" delves into the raw and unfiltered experiences of a newborn, presenting a deeply introspective narrative. The story's mood oscillates between the innocence of discovery and the harsh realities of life, skillfully utilizing vivid imagery and emotional depth. Through the protagonist's perspective, Dina invites readers to question the notions of love, care, and the impact of one's environment on early development.

Point of View

Original Submission by Dina Qaisara

Tab 1

That first breath I took was almost suffocating. The kind that makes you feel alive and dying at the same time. It didn’t help that a woman wearing this weird garment was striking my bottom a few times for whatever reason. Naturally I cried angrily to express my pain. That seemed to stop her at least. I’m not sure what I did wrong to deserve a punishment right after my first breath.

Some time passed and I was handed to someone else. I assumed that was what was happening as I felt multiple hands handling me at the same time before it ended with two yet again and the faces changed. My eyes were blurry and I could not see much to describe my surroundings properly. Not to mention the brightness of the room hurt my eyes, so I decided to keep them close. The person wiped my body with a warm wet towel then wrapped me in a piece of cozy fabric. The warmth was so extraordinarily comforting that I almost drifted to sleep, but then it was rudely interrupted as someone picked me up again and tried to hand me to another person a few paces from our initial position. Why were there so many people touching me? This new person has a familiar scent that I could not pinpoint. A scent that brought about nostalgia and a feeling of calmness. It was as if I was supposed to cling onto that person, like they were made for me.

I didn’t actually get to touch the owner of the scent. The familiar comforting smell started fading as I got further away from its source. My overstimulated ears picked up a few words spoken around me when the person tried to hand me to the scent-owner. Apparently the scent-owner declined from holding me and told my handler to put me away. It was confusing but there was not much I could do. They put me down somewhere that was layered with a thin towel and I could feel it moving. The constant vibration of the motion surging throughout my body indicated that I was being rolled away. The vibration however, got me sleepy again. It was tiring to be doing so many things right after my first breath, forgive me for needing some rest. My eyes remained closed and being rolled away was the last thing I remember for that day.

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It had been a few days since I was home. At least that was what I was told when they put my carrier down after we were inside the house. I had been sleeping a lot the first few weeks of my life. I’d wake up once a while when I got hungry or when my diapers needed changing, all of which was communicated through cries. It was tedious having to repeat them again and again. To be frank, crying is not my preferred form of communication either. Nobody gets what it is that you want or need and then you get frustrated because your needs are unmet so you cry louder, and your caregivers get even more frustrated because they can’t figure out what it is that you want. It’s hell for everyone. I heard them complaining to each other about how tired they were. At some point their voices raised and I cried again for how startling it was. Occasionally, the doors would get slammed and sounds of glasses shattering on the wall.

While it was annoying to be on the receiving end of things, thankfully they tried to give me everything I could possibly need. Although it always seemed like they had no idea what they were doing when they decided to check my diaper and feed me milk each time I cried. I guess they didn’t know that diapers and milk weren’t the only things I needed. I wish I had a different way to communicate. I have no idea who these people were, I don’t think they’ve ever introduced themselves. One of them has that familiar scent from that first day I breathed, so I supposed I really was meant to be with them. They fed and changed my diaper and then left me alone until my next cries.

At first I cried whenever I needed sleep and wanted to be held. Each time they would come over to check if my diaper was full. If it’s not full then they would offer me milk, and when I declined it, they often decided to put me back down and leave me there until I got tired of crying and feeling mildly lightheaded from the dehydration.Over time, I learned that they were never going to hold me or accompany me when I needed sleep, so I learned to sleep on my own quietly. At least they never forgot to feed me and I was never left to starve. Although they missed diaper changing sessions multiple times and rashes started developing on by back. It was harsh and painful, and they started to change my diapers more often since then. Something about medicine costs a lot more than diapers and it’s better to change more often than having to visit the doctors multiple times a month. I don’t know what it all meant but it’s better than having to endure itches that you are incapable of scratching yourself.

I couldn’t move on my own and I couldn't speak, the only movement I was capable of at the time was moving my head, arms, and legs while lying on my back. My joints were weak, I couldn’t do anything without someone’s help. Too vulnerable, too dependent. I don’t understand why we are made this way when baby animals can move by themselves right after birth. So I laid there by myself, bored and unentertained. Every now and then I put my arms and legs up to observe them. Out of curiosity I sometimes chew on my fingers and toes. It kept me entertained for hours. Weirdly this gesture calms me enough to put me to sleep too. I guess I do sleep a lot. I can’t do much anyway and being this small and powerless even the tiniest actions take a lot of my energy. Crying for one, is at least a half days’ worth of energy lost. That’s why babies sleep a lot, it’s not that we want to, we are forced to sleep in order to stay functional. Not that being “functional” is important at our age anyway. Still, if we need to cry which takes immense energy to communicate our needs, sleeping to regain that energy isn’t that illogical to begin with. Besides, I think the people that take care of me would probably prefer me asleep than awake. I heard them talking to themselves whenever they saw my eyes open.

“Awake again?? Why can’t you just sleep forever?”

Then they would walk past me, pretending like I wasn’t there. Sleeping forever? Is that even possible? I thought to myself at the time. Wouldn’t that hurt your body? I know mine does whenever I lay down for too long. The pain from laying down too long motivated me to learn to turn myself so I can lay on my belly when my bones and body got slightly stronger

My life continued this way for several months. Eat, sleep, have my diapers changed, and repeat until I finally learned to crawl. My movement was still restricted in some ways but moving around the house was then made possible the moment I developed this life-changing skill. I tried to learn to stand too, but my lower half of the body was still unbelievably weak for that and balancing my weight on my feet was a whole other challenge I needed to figure out. If I were to wait until I perfectly mastered every single motor skill to start exploring my environment, I might actually miss something important from the delay. Anxious over the thought, exploring every corner of the house became my priority after milk and sleep.

Initially, I could only crawl so far before my knees started hurting, then I would need a long rest to recover. That made exploring an impossible task, so I decided to put it off until I was much stronger later on. I still practiced crawling around the room every day. I could feel that my knees were getting stronger the more I crawled, so that was a huge motivation for me to keep trying. A week later, I felt like I could manage crawling around the house before the pain set in and started off my journey at once. The house is big. At least it seemed that way from where I was seeing things. Everything was much bigger than me regardless. There’s not much furniture here so obstacles were out of the question, but that also meant I wouldn't have much support if I decided I wanted to stand up. Oh yes, I could stand up if I held on to something as I did it. Only for a short while though, my lower half of the body was still not strong enough to stand for an extended period at the time.

I learned a few weeks back that the people giving me food and changing my diapers were my parents and the person whose scent was familiar was my mother and the other person was my father. Apparently they were the ones who brought me to life. I only came to know about this information because it was mentioned in one of their screaming matches. Words like ‘never’, ‘parents’, and ‘regret’ were spoken but I couldn’t make out the whole sentences as the pillow I was laying on muffled the sounds.

Since I first came into this house this particular room has always been where I was at. My bed was on the floor — there were about three layers of thin sheets which acted as my bedding and a small pillow that fit just right with the size of my head — this was where they always put me and left me to sleep. Occasionally one of them would come visit me and talk to me for several seconds before they left to do their own thing. Besides my bedding was a mattress — this was where she, my mother, always sleeps. Always. I rarely see her get up and when she does, she’ll come back after about 200 breaths and go back to sleep. I started counting my own breaths to estimate how long she’ll be gone for each time. I know we didn’t talk much, but having her in the same room comforted me and helped me feel less lonely.

I crawled out of my sheets and went to check on my mother on her mattress. She was still sleeping. She’s been asleep for more than a day and only woke up earlier to feed me then continued on with her sleep, which was when I started my exploring. There is no clock anywhere in the house, so telling time was a bit of a challenge, I could only estimate time based on how bright it looked outside through the window. According to my observation she’s been sleeping since the outside was bright the day before until it was almost dark that day. But it didn’t matter, I didn't need her for my mission anyway. There was no light in the room and there was nothing else besides the mattress and my bedding. I only knew where to go because outside of the bedroom door frame it was a little bit illuminated. More than half of the door is broken due to age — rotting from the inside out. The majority of what was left was the doorframe with a little bit of rotting wood sticking — which was once the door — sticking out from its hinges, no longer able to be closed. Which was good for me, otherwise, this whole exploring thing would not even be possible.

Ten crawls out the door and I could see several green and brown glass bottles scattered around the floor, filling every corner and space. All of them seemed to be empty and some glass shards could be seen laying alongside the wall opposite from where I was sitting. There is another room on the left side of the bedroom hallway. I resolved to make it my first stop in the exploration and crawled over to the plastic door. Unfortunately the door was locked from the outside and I was far too short to reach the handle. There is a massive hole in the middle of it, but again, my height rendered it impossible to peek inside. I gave up the idea of visiting the room and continued crawling over to my father who was also sleeping on a slightly thicker cloth than my own bedding thirty crawls away from the locked room.

As I reached him, a horrid smell hit my nose and I realised it came directly from him. A few of those green and brown bottles also scattered on his side and one of them was partially gripped by his fingers. Half of the bottle’s content spilled on the floor, resulting in a yellowish puddle. I put one of my palms on his right cheek and tried to see if I could wake him up and inform him of the mess he made, but my attempt failed. So I sat there for a moment, thinking about what I should do next. It was then that I realised that my palms and legs were blackened with dust and soot. Disgusted that my hands were dirtied, I tried to rub them off on my father’s sleeping sheets. It faded a bit but I couldn’t entirely remove them from my skin. With no other choice, I was forced to accept my fate that the soot would most likely stay on my skin until the next time my mother decided to wipe my body clean.

The shattered glasses I was talking about were near the kitchen. Afraid that I might accidentally cut my skin, I made a mental note to explore the kitchen in the future instead. I know broken glass is dangerous because I saw my mother pick some shards out of her arms and feet before, they were bleeding and I could see blood dripping on the floor. It was a horrifying scene. I am not sure why but the red pool of blood made me uncomfortable. Of course I didn’t want to recreate that scene, so staying clear of the kitchen was my only option.

I did, however, see a small stick lighted up on a plate above my father’s head. I had never seen that thing before and couldn’t put a name on it. There was some soot piled up on the plate too. Curious of the object, I crawled over to look at it closer. The light coming out of it was fascinating as I thought only the outside and lighting could create light. I didn’t know there were other things capable of producing it too. A trail of smoke was produced by the object which also released a distinct smoky and pungent smell and the lighted end slowly turned to gray ashes on the plate. Somehow the smell was familiar. After pondering on it for a while I remembered that it is the same smell I’ve been smelling for as long as I can remember, even right then.

My small hands still hadn't mastered using individual fingers at a time. If I wanted to grab or hold onto something I could only do it by palming them. Out of burning curiosity, that was what I did. The lighted end of the stick touched my skin and in an instant I could feel a searing pain through my palm and a shock throughout my whole body. As a reflex, I released the object and let out a loud cry. My father didn’t seem to hear me as he didn’t even budge a little, but my mother came rushing out of her room to soothe me, looking somewhat panicked, scared, and angry herself.

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It had been a while since the burning incident, but since then, I was too traumatised to continue my exploration. I stopped trying to get out of the room and had only been practicing my motor skills inside the bedroom where everything was mostly safe, aside from some splinters sticking out from the hinges, which I tried my best to avoid. I’d learned to stay away from any sharp and glowing objects, they always seemed to cause some sort of harm and overall were unpleasant to deal with.

I’d learned to walk and climb, I think these were much better than crawling. However, since there was nothing I could climb on except the mattress, that was where I was putting the skill to use. Fortunately for me the mattress lay just beside the bedroom window. I would climb it and look out almost every day. The window is facing the backyard but occasionally you could see people walk by. Sometimes I see other kids playing among themselves on the other side of the street. This had become my one and only form of entertainment since I outgrew finger-chewing. Besides, I started growing more and more teeth, which made chewing on my fingers hurtful.

My mother still communicated with me only when she needed to, but she spent a lot more time awake since that incident. She also started sitting with me and just doing nothing together and started spending a lot more of her time on me — feeding me solid food and giving me baths. I stopped drinking milk at this point because she said I was too big for that now. And since I had been getting baths, I also learned that the locked door next to the bedroom is actually the bathroom. It stinks a lot and you can visibly see that the bathroom wall is full of brownish and reddish with slippery texture, while in some corners they are fully black in color. I only knew the texture because my curious hand had to touch it to understand what it was. I regretted it a lot and was silently thankful that the door was locked on that day.

Sometimes she’d go out of the house for several hours and come back with some food for her and my father, toss him the packed food and go to crush some dry biscuits mixed with water for me. She said I only need to eat to be alive so taste shouldn’t matter much. That we are far too broke and poor to afford those fancy baby foods they sell in stores. I had no idea what she was talking about as I was not even sure what a ‘store’ was. To me, the crushed biscuits were the best thing I’d ever eaten. Probably because I never had anything else in my life but I was thankful that I got to eat something anyway.

After our meals she’d often go back to her routine of sleeping for hours until the next time we have to eat. She’d leave me alone again and let me go to sleep at my own pace. Maybe she knew I wouldn’t go out by myself anymore which gave her the confidence to leave me alone. Something weird happens before she goes to sleep on some nights. For some reason she would push in a sharp metal inside her arm and then collapse to sleep. I stared at her once as she was doing it and she told me that it was medicine. But how could it be medicine if it is hurtful? I thought we’ve established that sharp and glowing things are not good or pleasant to be around? I still couldn’t speak, and when I tried some gibberish came out instead, so I couldn’t ask her those questions and accept that it is medicine. I guess some medicine needs to be taken through painful ways.

My father, I don’t think he had ever talked to me. We crossed paths various times when he would come into the room to ask my mother for something. My mother would ask for his help to dress me up sometimes and he would do it quietly then leave me to continue doing his own thing. I don’t have much to tell about him. What I knew of him were simply the fruits of my own observation. He usually would sit in his usual spot when he’s home and would routinely go out in the morning, I would know because I tend to peek out from the bedroom. Going out scared me but looking wouldn’t do me any harm. However, the lack of direct contact with him, means my knowledge of him is limited to what I can see from afar, and I didn’t see much.

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I wasn’t sure what this feeling was. My mother started hugging me right after she took her sharp medicine before sleeping a few weeks back. It felt warm and it felt wrong, but at the same time it felt comforting. At first, the sudden changes and foreign sensation got me uncomfortable, but overtime I had learned to accept it and hug her back — I think that was what I’m supposed to do when you hug someone.

I’m almost three-years-old now. My mother told me that she’s planning to celebrate it with me and that I would be able to eat special food. I didn’t know what celebrating something meant but it sounded like she was looking forward to it a lot, so I smiled widely and gave her a hug.

I found myself forgetting a lot of stuff that I used to know and it was getting harder to put things into words. One good thing was that I could now form short sentences. Enough to communicate what I want to my parents. Not that I talk much to either of them anyway. I never know what to say to them even if I want to have a conversation. On the other hand, my father scared me, so that was even less of a reason why I would talk to him. He always looked mad and exhibited an air of aggression in the way he did things. He’s like the glowing sticks and sharp objects, it is better to stay as far away from them to keep yourself safe I think.

I started going out of the room a bit more. Getting baths in the bathroom pretty much acted like desensitization practice. Day by day, I stopped feeling afraid to step out by myself and would roam around the house when everyone was asleep and I got bored. I found some things I could play with when I realised the glass bottles lying around the house could produce sweet sounds if you hit them lightly, so I would spend a part of my day hitting the bottles together to make various sounds to listen to. When that got me bored, I would continue my playtime by looking through pictures from the old books and papers laying around the house then curl them into a ball when I was done. I’d throw it up and kick it around for a while before I got tired and fell asleep in the middle of the room.

One day, I decided it’s time I continue my exploration that I put off years ago. There were no longer glass shards on the floor, so it seemed safe enough. I waddled to the kitchen and found there was a small round table with two chairs on opposite sides of each other. The table was much taller than me so I couldn’t see what was on top of it. I knew I could climb the chair and see, but decided that it should be the last thing on the list as climbing is a tiring activity. The lack of furniture in the house forbade me from practicing my climbing skills properly so it is the one thing I hadn’t quite mastered.

I continued the exploration by opening the cabinets next to the table and a lot of them were empty except one. This one is full of peculiar things that I couldn’t even describe. But they don’t look like something I could play with or eat, so I closed the door.

I accidentally let go of the door in the middle of closing it and it smashed on the cabinet’s frame. My heart started beating faster, I looked at my father where he seemed to still be asleep, and felt a little calmer. I then tried to open the fridge — this is where you put food in. I saw my mother taking out stuff from it and putting in my food before, so I could guess what was inside, but I still want to see them for myself. I pulled on the door as hard as I could and it just wouldn’t open. I tried harder and suddenly a plastic container fell down from on top of the fridge, crashing on the floor and spilled the contents inside. It’s just a few leftover cookies. Since I was feeling hungry anyway, I took a piece of cookie and nibbled on it slowly — letting it melt in my mouth before I swallowed.

There was nothing left in the kitchen for me to search so I went back to the table. I put whatever leftover strength I had and pulled myself up the chair until half of my body was on top of it, then used the rest of my strength to stand up. The table was piled with some white dust. I touched it and suddenly recognized it. I still didn’t know what it was but I know this must be the same white dust spread all around the house. The dust wasn't obvious but I could still see it on the floor or stuck on clothes sometimes. Since it is in this, it must be some kind of food, I thought to myself. I reached out to touch it and have a taste when my father yelled at me.

“What the hell are you doing?! Get down from there. Now! Not only were you being loud and bothering my sleep, now you are going through my stuff too??”

I froze — slowly climbed down from the chair and stood there silently beside the table, staring at the floor. I managed to croak a ‘sorry’ and felt my eyes start to water from the shock of getting yelled at and fear.

“I was bored…”, I tried to explain.

“Just- just get out of my face. I don’t care if you’re bored, go to your mother!”

My body was still in shock and I could hardly move a muscle. My eyes started running faster, I could feel some tears rolled down my cheeks and slowly dripped on the floor.

“What are you even crying for? Go!”, he yelled again and this time I forced myself to raise my feet up and run into the room. I laid on bed fully crying and found myself asleep, dreaming a happy dream.

I woke up to my parents arguing again. I heard some things getting flung across the room and shattered. The loud chaos inside the house told me it would be better that I stay inside the room but my curiosity made me desperately need to know what was going on. I crept slowly to the doorframe and took a slow cautious peek outside. I don’t understand what they were arguing about but both of them had their voices raised. Surely enough, the floor is full of shattered glasses. Deciding I had seen enough, I tried to slowly creep back inside the room, but I supposed I didn’t move as stealthily as I had hoped because after that my father suddenly yelled at me.

“What are you looking at?!”, as he stomped towards me. My body froze again, unable to move no matter how much I was telling it to. Failing to hide and protect myself, he grabbed me by the arm trying to drag me to the living room. That was when my mother jumped in, fought him off and picked me up, creating a protective shell around me using her arms.

“You don’t need to hurt the child” she exclaimed and brought me outside the house for the first time in my life. She said staying away is much safer for the time being. She put me down to let me walk by myself and hold my hands tight. We walked outside a bit. Everything was overwhelming. Too many things for me to process all at once. Too many colours hitting my eyes. After a rather brief walk, we stopped in front of this green field and colorful weird structure standing in the middle of it. My mother told me that it is a playground, saying I could go and play there for a while to let my father calm himself down before we go back home. So I did. At least I tried to, as I didn’t know what playing in a playground is like.

As we walked back home, she told me that playing at the playground earlier was my birthday gift and that she didn’t think there would be any special food for me after all. I was a bit disappointed hearing that. We arrived home and found my father sleeping in his usual spot. We slowly tiptoed to our room and went to sleep ourselves. My mother still had her usual dose of medicine before sleep.

I woke up the next day and saw my mother was gone. She was not in the room, not anywhere in the house. I didn’t think much of it as she usually goes out to get food and would be back after a while. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since she left. Unfortunately I was feeling so thirsty that I didn't think I could wait until she came back. I went to the kitchen to see if there was anything I could drink and the only thing that made sense was the sink. The sink creates water, I saw my mother use the sink for water multiple times before.

My father was also out of the house, that means I could move freely without worrying about him. I walked to the kitchen, looked up at the sink, and understood immediately that I would need to climb up the chair again. I pushed the chair closer to my target, climbed up, and leaned over to the handle that helps create water for the sink. It took a few tries before I could figure out how to make the water come out. Finally, I turned the handle the correct way and some water came running out of the pipe. I opened my mouth, inched closer to the pipe trying to make the water go straight in, but the water was too fast and splashed all over me, making my clothes wet. Of course that was not gonna work, so I found a different way to drink by cupping my hands together, allowing the water to pool in my hands before I bring it closer to my mouth.

I felt much better after that. I climbed down and immediately pushed the chair back to its initial place. I wanted to look for food too but I knew only the fridge contained any food at all, so I discarded the idea. Just as the chair reached its initial place, my father opened the door and instantly his eyes fell on me. The front door of the house and the kitchen face each other. My body suddenly turned cold with fear and my heart thumped through my chest as I tried to run away to hide in the room.

“I told you to stay away from my stuff!” He yelled at me while storming towards me. My small legs betrayed me, he was much faster than I was.

“Why can’t you mind your own business?!” He growled as he grabbed my body and threw me across the room. My whole body hurt. I tried to get up but he got to me again before I could do anything. He threw one of the bottles laying around the house that was closest to him on the floor towards me. He missed by a few steps but the bottle crashed and some of the shards hit my skin, tearing it open and started bleeding. I suppose missing the throw made him even more angry that it didn’t hit me directly because after that he started to kick and stomp on me until my vision got blurry. I felt lightheaded and before I knew it, I lost my consciousness.

I woke up later on to see he’s unconscious at the table in the kitchen. I tried to move but I think there are parts of my body that got broken. Even breathing was so painful. That was when I remembered my mother’s medicine. People take medicine when they are in pain, she told me. I thought maybe if I take some of hers, it will soothe my pain too.

So I forced myself to drag myself to the room. It took immense effort. Every drag hurt more than the last. Until finally I entered the room, reached under the pillow and found her medicine. She always kept it there. I took one careful look at it, determined to use it to help with my pain, the small tube was full. One, two, three breaths and I stabbed the sharp end of it into my arm and pushed all of its content down into my vein. A few seconds passed, I felt lightheaded again and fell asleep when I heard my mother let out a hysterical scream.

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You might be wondering how I even have the vocabulary to narrate what was going on around me throughout my 3 years of life. Babies and toddlers aren’t smart enough to think, right? That’s what most people believe, and so they always think we are not aware of our environments in our first few years of life.

The truth of the matter is, every soul was born with the knowledge to express and think for themselves, we just do not have the capability to express them verbally. Over time as humans grow up, we lose our initial knowledge of the world and it gets replaced with what we actually learned when we were alive. The soul-knowledge is what I like to call it, it is more straightforward and easier to understand this way. The actual term however, is Anamnesis.

Popular beliefs surrounding this phenomenon assume that we lose our memory and knowledge of the soul dimension upon birth due to physical trauma of getting birthed. The reality is, we do get a bit of amnesia from birth, but simple vocabularies, memories, and knowledge are usually retained which we then gradually lose alongside physical growth. After that, any lingering memories were assumed to be dreams. Well, technically dreams are basically a peek into the soul dimension, but humans don’t know that, and that is a story for another day.

I am now dead. You saw what had happened when I was three, so for those who need things to be spelled out and have trouble putting two and two together, I died. My physical body I mean. My soul is still here of course, which is how I can even narrate my really short life story in the first place.

Death, how everyone is uncomfortable with that topic. It is a part of life yet most people fear it. Everyone would rather not talk about it and pretend that it is not a thing, but it is a thing and you can’t run away from it forever. Refusing to acknowledge that bad things happen does not stop them from actually happening.

As for me, my life was cut short because I was born into a family that did not want me. It’s not my fault. I never asked to be materialised or to be brought on earth, as cliche as that line is, it is the truth. I can’t control my circumstances. And I’m not blaming my parents either, I suppose. True, they were terrible people, and my hatred for them for hurting me and taking my life makes me wish bad things would happen to them too, but they never wanted me, as much as I never asked to be alive.

Oh no, don’t you dare twist this story to make it seem like I am excusing terrible people for the terrible things they do, no. I’m just saying that sometimes people don’t have a choice and it is okay to empathise with them while at the same time acknowledging that they are bad people. As people love to say, two things can be true at the same time. I don’t love them, not really. They were self-destructive kinds of people. Constantly looking for problems, incompetent, incapable. They wouldn’t know how to use their privilege, opportunities, or wealth if those things were dropped on their heads. Hypothetically, their lives would not get any better just because they didn’t have me, but at least that would be one less suffering.

Now, now, this wasn’t supposed to sound depressing. It was a story about life. As far as life goes, I hope people realise that having kids is not something you do for fun or because your life feels hollow or empty. You shouldn’t have kids just because you need a caretaker when you are wrinkled and seventy with knee problems. And people absolutely shouldn’t be forced to have kids if they are evidently incapable of even taking care of themselves. But no matter, what’s done is done. I am dead anyway.

I heard the sounds of sirens closing in as I sat on the floor beside my cold, bloody body. The police broke the front door and rushed in cuffing my mother and father. Informing them something about getting arrested for murder. Pictures of my body were taken and some investigations were done in the house before my body was taken away.

A few days passed since the incident and I was finally given a proper burial. There was no one at my grave, my parents are in jail and no one else knew of my existence to pay me a visit before I was lowered into the lonely hole of death. I heard the people who took care of my body talking about me and apparently I made the news and a lot of people sympathised with my tragic ending. It won’t last for long though. In a week people will forget all about me, and it will be like nothing ever happened. Death is so feared because nobody remembers you once you are gone, but if living only brings you misery, is it really better?

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a celebration of literary creativity and expression. It invites writers from around the world to share their unique voices and perspectives, fostering a global community of storytellers. Participants explore diverse themes, crafting works that resonate with readers and reflect the human experience.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Dina Qaisara for her moving short story, "Point of View," submitted to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her narrative beautifully captures the complexities of life from a unique perspective, enriching the tapestry of this year's submissions. We look forward to witnessing her continued contributions to the literary world.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.