Our Bruises

Our Bruises   -   in Persian    زخم‌های ما 

By: John Kazerooni

Lucan walks home after school. He is exhausted and hungry.

He stands in front of the mirror on the wall. His parents are not home yet, as usual. Under his eyes, dark bruises bloom like shadows that refuse to leave. The street gang found him again.

He opens the refrigerator. There is nothing inside. No breakfast. No lunch. And now, no dinner. As always, his parents are still at work. The house is quiet—not with peace, but with absence of their love.

He pauses—half from weakness, half from thought. How can he hide his eyes? His heart is uneasy, its rhythm unsettled. His silent screams echo loudly in his mind.

“I hope they don’t see my bruises,” he whispers to himself. “And if they do… what will I say?”

He is terrified of his parents’ anger. He walks into his room—tired, angry, sad, empty in more ways than one. He opens his books, trying to begin his homework, as if discipline could quiet hunger, as if focus could erase pain.

Before he can begin, the door opens. His father’s voice cuts through the house: “Are you in your room?”

The door swings open without warning. Lucan turns his face away—but not fast enough.

“What happened to your eyes?” A pause. “You fought again?”

The voice grows louder, heavier. “Didn’t I tell you not to fight?”

There is no space for an answer. No space for explanation. No space for truth. No space for defense. The belt speaks instead, before he is ever heard.

His father leaves.

Moments later, his mother enters—not with questions, but with conclusions already formed. “He fought again,” the father said. And so she continues what has already begun.

Her words strike deeper than hands—sharper than the gang, more painful than the teacher’s punishment, colder than hunger.

“You’re not getting anything for dinner.”

Lucan says nothing. He closes his books. What is there left to learn today?

He lies on his bed, his body aching, his stomach empty. He closes his eyes—not to sleep, but to dream… and to escape.

Maybe tomorrow… Maybe tomorrow there will be food. Maybe tomorrow there will be no gang. Maybe tomorrow his parents will not judge him before hearing him. Maybe tomorrow will be different—a hope that flickers like a distant light in darkness, shining unexpectedly.

And then—something fragile, yet persistent—a dream.

He refuses to let his dreams die within him.

He dreams that one day he will have his own home… his own car… his own family. He will not hurt them. He will ask his children how their day was. He will listen. He will hug them. He will love them. A gentle dream, born in a violent world. 

And slowly, with hope as his only comfort, Lucan falls asleep. But even in sleep, another truth stands beside that dream—quiet, uninvited, unavoidable. What if he becomes like them?

Morning comes. Nothing has changed. The same cycle of pain covers day after day, moving further away from his dreams. Again—another day, another pain.

He walks into school with the same tired body and the same unseen wounds. His homework is unfinished—not from laziness, but from hunger, from pain, from a night that gave him no space to be a child.

The teacher calls his name. “Where is your homework?”

Lucan says nothing. There is no explanation ready for a life like his. No sentence that can carry the weight of an empty stomach, an empty home, an empty refrigerator, parents who are always at work yet never truly present, a violent street, and a restless night.

The teacher does not ask further. Do not wonder. Only a conclusion—quick, simple, convenient. Negligence. Disobedience. So his punishment follows, as usual. Another mark is added to his record—but not to his story.

And so, another day continues.

The same teacher’s punishment. The same gang’s violence. The same father’s discipline. The same mother’s anger.

A world that repeats itself—day after day—until repetition begins to feel like destiny. And so the questions grow louder—not only his, but ours.

What should he do to not become like them?

How long can a dream survive in a life that contradicts it every day?

And the most difficult question of all: If Lucan begins to act like his surroundings… is that his failure—or his formation?

There are homes where silence is not peace, but a quiet agreement between pain and endurance. There are homes where absence speaks louder than presence—where parents are always working, yet something essential remains unattended.

There are mirrors that do not reflect a face, but a question.

Lucan stands before such a mirror. He does not look at himself the way a child should—curious, careless, alive. He studies himself like evidence.

The bruises are becoming a language—one no one has taught him, yet everyone seems to answer with more of it.

What is a child to do when the world becomes a series of closed doors?

A refrigerator that holds no food. A home that holds no refuge. Parents who are present in duty, but absent in understanding. A school that punishes but does not ask. A street that teaches survival through violence.

We like to believe childhood is a beginning. But for some, it is already a continuation—of wounds they did not create, of patterns they did not choose, but are slowly being shaped by.

Lucan is hungry—not only for food, but to be seen without suspicion, to be asked, not accused, to be held, not struck, to be understood, not judged.

And yet—astonishingly—he still dreams. Not of revenge. Not of becoming stronger than those who hurt him. But of becoming different.

“I will not become what hurts me.”

But here is the quiet tension in his story:

Can a child live in fire and never learn to burn?

Hope lives within him—but so does influence.

Dreams grow within him—but so does imitation.

Because children do not only imagine the future—they absorb the present.

If every day teaches him that force is power, that silence is survival, that pain is normal—at home, on the street, and even in the classroom—then what is he truly learning, beyond what he hopes?

And if one day he raises his voice the way his father does… if one day his hands speak before his heart… if one day he becomes what he once feared—will we ask, “What is wrong with him?”

Or will we ask, “What has been done to him?”

This is where the story becomes uncomfortable.

Because we celebrate his dream—but hesitate to face his reality. We admire the child who breaks the cycle, but we judge the one who continues it—as if both were given the same world.

Who is at fault?

Is it the parents, always at work yet absent in presence?

Is it the teacher, who saw the missing homework but not the missing support?

Is it society, building systems but forgetting souls?

Is it the gang, born from the same neglect?

Or is it something more difficult—something shared?

We often look for blame because blame gives us distance. If it belongs to someone else, we are free.

But what if responsibility is not a finger pointing outward, but a thread connecting us all?

A child does not grow alone. He grows within everything we allow, ignore, or justify.

So when he reflects his surroundings, we must ask:

Are we witnessing his failure—or our reflection?

If Lucan learns to strike, who taught him that force is a language?

If he learns to hide, who made the truth unsafe?

If he is punished for what he could not complete, who failed to see why he could not begin?

If he becomes hard, who surrounded him with hardness?

And if—despite all this—he remains gentle, remains kind, remains different—will we finally understand how extraordinary that is?

There is a quiet tragedy in Lucan’s story—but also a quiet warning. Because children do not just live in the world we create. They become it.

And so the deeper question is no longer only about his dream—but about his direction.

What will shape him more: the hope he carries inside… or the world that surrounds him every day?

Lucan sleeps with both. A beautiful dream in his heart—and a powerful world pressing against it. And perhaps that is where our responsibility begins.

Not only in admiring his dream, but in asking ourselves:

What are we doing—individually and collectively—to ensure that his dream has a chance to survive?

Because somewhere, right now, another child stands in front of a mirror—holding both a vision of who they want to be, and a reflection of what they are becoming. And which one wins… may have less to do with the child—and more to do with all of us.

Click on the link https://sites.google.com/view/johnkaz to explore Tapestry of My Thoughts

Medium Readers

Click on the link https://medium.com/@iselfschooling to explore Tapestry of My Thoughts