A Record Of Delia's War <OFFICIAL - 2024>

Signing off. Delia Rojas, Archivist of the Ashes.” The metal box was found in 2189 during the reconstruction of the Meridian Cultural District. The oak tree had grown around it. Inside: the ledger, the children’s book Goodnight Moon , and a rusty spoon with a bent handle.

Delia Rojas was thirty-two years old when the Uprising of the Consolidated Blocs began. She was not a soldier. She was a librarian. And when the bombs fell on the Meridian Library, she picked up a broken radio, a pistol she did not know how to use, and a waterproof ledger book. She called her project A Record of Delia’s War —not out of ego, but out of the desperate need to put her name on something that would survive her. a record of delia's war

What follows are selected entries. They have been lightly edited for clarity, but the roughness—the fear, the hunger, the fury—remains. “The shelf is still warm. Not from sunlight. From the fire two blocks away. I’m sitting in the children’s section—or what’s left of it. ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ is ash. But ‘Goodnight Moon’ survived. I’m holding it. That feels like a sign. Signing off

I don’t know how to fight. But I know how to keep a record. Someone should remember which streets still have water. Which rooftops have a view of the Bloc checkpoints. Which alleys smell like gas leaks. Inside: the ledger, the children’s book Goodnight Moon

I sat in a stairwell afterward and cried until I threw up. Then I ate a cold potato. Then I wrote this.

I have not slept in three days. I have walked past two checkpoints wearing a dead woman’s coat. I am looking for her. But the city is a graveyard with a few breathing people in it.

Tonight I found a child. Three years old. Wandering near the old tram depot. No name. No note. Just a stuffed rabbit with one ear. I carried her for six hours until an old man said he knew her grandmother. The grandmother was dead. But the neighbor took her anyway.