🌺 The White Hibiscus: I Surrender

The white hibiscus—
pure, delicate, serene.
But behind its bloom lies a forgotten pain,
a silent scream buried in war-torn soil.

---

There once was a war so fierce
it tore the land from its roots.
When the dust settled,
only a handful of survivors and a camp of prisoners remained.

The prisoners were herded into camps—
where life dangled between cruelty and chance.
Some days, a spoonful of grain per family.
Other days, a boot to the ribs for asking why.

Children vanished.
Some were executed.
Some… adopted by strangers.
Only the obedient were spared.

Nights echoed with weeping—
little voices crying in the dark,
asking for mothers who couldn’t answer
and fathers who’d already disappeared.

---

Then came suspicion.
The captors believed a spy lived among the prisoners—
a father figure with soft eyes and hard secrets.

He was found.
Dragged from his family.
Taken to a blank, white room.

---

There, the true horror began.

They bound him—
limbs tied, mouth sealed,
suspended from the ceiling
by a fraying rope that whispered of death.

Then came the lion.

Starving.
Eyes glowing with hunger.
It leapt—just shy of his dangling body.

Hour by hour, more lions arrived.
One by one.
The room became a throbbing jungle of predators.
They lunged, roared, struck—
never quite reaching,
only pushing him into a pendulum of fear.

The rope frayed.
The air reeked of rot and bloodlust.

The lions, denied their feast,
turned on each other.
Teeth tore flesh.
Bones snapped.
Roars became screams.

Until there was only one left.
Bloody, breathless, victorious.
And still—unsatisfied.

Its eyes returned to the prisoner.

---

He didn't scream.
He no longer could.

When they returned to extract information,
they found only madness.
The man spoke in fragments.
Nonsense. Gibberish.
His mind, like the rope, had snapped.

So they left him—
a ruined husk, twitching in silence.

But someone forgot to lock the door.

---

He crawled.
He ran.
Out of the camp, into the forest.

But fate wasn’t finished.

A root tripped him.
Soldiers closed in.

Lying on the dirt,
bleeding, gasping,
he grabbed the nearest thing—
a white hibiscus.

He held it aloft like a flag,
and with cracked lips, cried:

"I surrender!"

They beat him.
Dragged him back.
And executed him.

Too broken to be of use.
Too loud to be forgotten.

---

Later, the guards framed that same hibiscus.
Hung it on the camp wall.
Under it, they etched two words:

“I Surrender”

As a joke.
A warning.
A mockery.

---

But the flower didn’t wilt.
It remained.
Watching.
Remembering.

And long after the war ended,
long after the walls of the camp crumbled,
the white hibiscus still bloomed—

Not as a sign of weakness—
but of what it costs to survive.