The sun has yet to come up and I can hear the rhythmic breathing of my two little sisters. In the dark this familiar sound is like a lamp almost, providing me with just enough hope to be able to feel my way around. My name is Taya and I am 19 years old and after months of consideration, of both the negative and positive aspects of what it would and could mean to be caught with a journal that documents what it is that we all face every day, I’ve decided that I must. I know, from stories that can only be verbally passed down while no on e is sure to be listening, what a paper and pen once was. I know that there were machines once that a person could use to write things down, but now all of those are unavailable to me. The tools I use for this undertaking may seem primitive to some, although our society is anything but. It’s just that no longer are all the available extras that I’ve heard once existed still available. For now, I’m laying on my back underneath our kitchen table, a pile of mostly burnt wood to my right side, scraping and scratching these feelings onto the underside of the place where, when we all can, sit down as a family and eat. Another thing that is rarely available.

If I close my eyes I’m comforted by the scents that I could recognize anywhere. The fire that we are currently lucky to have warming us during this winter night, the skin ointment one of my friends grandmothers refers to as loshing, that she has suggested I illegally purchase for years now, that, as instructed I rub onto my sisters chest before they go to bed, and myself, a mixture of sweat and dirty clothes; that is a scent that is with me most of the time due to my refusal to bathe in the hope that saving some of our water rations may go to my little sister. I can see the way her entire mood changes when she is unable to be clean. A luxury that most do without, but I’ve always