Zaria had written thirty letters.
Each one soaked in tears. Each one filled with aching words from a child who had been forgotten by the world—and by her own mother.
She didn't know what else to do. Talking never helped. Crying only got her mocked. Praying felt like shouting into the wind. So she wrote. Writing became her only voice. Her only comfort. Her only weapon.
Every evening, after scrubbing pots until her fingers were blistered, after selling baskets in the hot sun, after being slapped or insulted for simply existing, Zaria would sneak into the tiny storage room that served as her bedroom and pull out her pencil and notebook. She would sit on her old mat in the dark corner and write to her mother.
"Dear Mom," she began in the first letter. "I'm not okay. I'm really not okay. I vomit blood, and no one here cares. My body hurts every day. Mom, I think I'm dying. I don't want to die like this. Please come. Please take me to the hospital. I'm begging you."
There was no response.
Still, she wrote.
"Dear Mom,
They don't feed me. Sometimes I go two days without food. They eat chicken and rice while I watch from the corner. I lick the pans like a stray dog. I'm always hungry, always weak. I feel like fainting all the time. Mom, do you care? Do you even remember me? Don't you also love me?"
She passed the letters to Linda, her only friend. Linda gave them to Mr. Tembo . He knew where Zaria's mother lived. He promised to deliver each letter personally. And he did.
Every week, Linda came back with the same painful answer. "She took the letter," she'd say softly, "but she didn't say anything."
Zaria's heart broke a little more each time. But she kept writing.
"Dear Mom,
I don't know why you left me. I don't know what I did. But every day, I wish you'd come back and take me away. I want to feel loved too. Just once. Just for a moment."
She told her about Sarah, her stepmother, who beat her for being too slow or too quiet. She told her about Mary and Claire, who called her names and laughed at her ragged clothes. She told her about the pain in her chest, how she coughed blood into her pillow some nights, how she feared she wouldn't live to see her next birthday.
Letter after letter. Cry after cry.
Thirty letters.
And not even one reply.
Zaria began to wonder if her mother read them at all. Maybe she burned them. Maybe she laughed. Or maybe—worst of all—maybe she read them and felt nothing.
Then, one cold evening, after a long day of labor and hunger, Zaria collapsed in the backyard while trying to carry a heavy basin of water. Sarah yelled at her, called her dramatic, accused her of pretending to avoid work.
That night, Zaria lay on her thin mattress, her body shivering, her eyes wide open in the darkness. Her lips were dry. Her limbs weak. Her spirit—completely drained.
She reached under the mattress and pulled out her notebook. Her hands trembled as she flipped past the pages of old letters. Then, with a shaky breath, she turned to the last page and wrote one final time.
---
Dear Mom,
I think this will be my last letter. I don't have the strength to write more. I've told you everything. I've begged you. I've cried for you. But you never replied.
It seems the heavens and earth abandoned me the day you did.
I try to understand why you left. I try to believe you had a reason. But no reason can explain how you stayed away this long—while your child starved, suffered, and slowly died inside.
All I ever wanted was to be loved. Just like Mary and Claire. I wanted someone to call me "my daughter" with pride. I wanted a mother who would hold me when I cried, a father who would protect me. I wanted to feel like I mattered.
But maybe I never did.
If I was a mistake to you, you should never have brought me into this world. Or maybe, you should have just killed me the day I was born.
At least I wouldn't have lived to know this much pain.
Mom, if I die today, I know you will all feel at peace.
No more letters.
No more begging.
No more Zaria.
Goodbye.
Zaria
---
She placed the notebook beside her and lay back down, staring at the roof. Her chest ached with every breath. Her throat burned. Her stomach cried out for food. But she felt nothing anymore.
The pain had become part of her. Just like the silence.
She didn't cry. She didn't pray. She had already done all that.
The wind howled softly through the broken window. A rat scurried across the floor. In the distance, Sarah's laughter echoed from the house, followed by the sounds of a radio and clinking dishes. Life was going on around her—while her own quietly slipped away.
The next morning, Linda came to visit. She found Zaria sitting silently on her mat, staring into space.
"You didn't sleep?" Linda asked.
Zaria shook her head. "I wrote the last one."
Linda opened the notebook slowly and read the short, final letter. Tears filled her eyes. Her voice trembled.
"Zaria... are you giving up?"
Zaria looked at her and managed a faint, sad smile.
"No. I gave up a long time ago. I'm just tired now."
Linda took the notebook and hugged it close. She promised to keep it safe. She promised to deliver the last letter to Mr Tembo and ask him if the woman really reads the letters her daughter writes to her?.
But Zaria didn't seem to care anymore.
She was no longer waiting for a reply.
She had said everything.
And even if no one answered—at least the world would know that she spoke.
That she cried.
That she loved.
That she lived.
Even if just in silence.