CeaseFire Parental Control

We’ve been in a ceasefire for years,
but none of it feels like peace.
Seven winters gone, and still
the air between us feels like debris.

You call it “family,”
but every phone call is a border crossing,
every holiday a checkpoint
where I’m searched for the son you wanted,
not the man I became.

I tried offering truce,
white flags wrapped in wrapping paper,
ribbons tied like treaties
you refused to sign.
You said I was the problem—
I said I’d rather be free
than live under occupation.

Mother, you built walls,
then accused me of distance.
You launched the first strikes,
then blamed me for the rubble.
History rewrites itself in your voice
no casualties, just “misunderstandings.”
Funny how dictators call it discipline,
and victims call it survival.

If love is the land we fought for,
you claimed it like territory—
I guarded it like a wound.

Seven years.
No negotiations.
No recognition of the harm.
Just silence across the DMZ
and a holiday season
that never feels like home.

You say you want peace
but peace requires truth,
and truth requires accountability.
Two things you treat
like forbidden weapons.

Mother, what does compromise look like
when one side stops bombing
and the other keeps denying it happened?

What does healing look like
when your heart is a settlement
built on land you were never willing to share?

Maybe in another life
we’d meet at the bargaining table
instead of opposite ends
of a generational war.

But in this one,
I light the tree alone,
wrap my trauma in tinsel,
and toast to a future
where survival
isn’t an act of rebellion.

I am not your enemy
I’m just the child
who stopped surrendering.