The Flesh that rose like smoke
A requiem for the unreproducible
The account of souls lost is not one invoice. It’s a ledger. And we, free from harm, who read, and write this, are the bookkeepers who keep deferring payment.
It is distant, it is not near, we can’t see the flames, but we can see the smoke of spirits rising, we can’t hear the screams, but we can feel the loss of souls, can’t see the mothers, daughter, sisters, babies, nonni expiring by Nobel assisted, spontaneous human combustion; we sense the fuel gauge of reproducible souls against entropy and darkness dwindling down…
“Amid these hearts that burn like coal; and the flesh that rose like smoke”¹
Every day we, free from harm, prevaricate, the cost in human, female humans, the only ones who can, you know, reproduce are never to be no more…the slow, lingering death of humanity by a thousand cuts, each cut a precious human with their spark of creation extinguished in the name of exclusive invisible friends, with no love for the children of another god.
Every day that passes has a huge cost in souls lost; by the second, by the minute, by the hour, are we doing nothing because it isn’t us, our nearest, neighbours, just how many degrees of separation are we away from the flesh that turns to smoke, as I write, you read, they die;
is it getting closer; has the scythe touched one who is cousin to a neighbour? or … to you? We are not immune, just deferred, till the burning souls in Gaza, Sudan, Gujerat… cease to be the human shield between us and golom’s insanity.
AND NO ONE, NO ONE, NO ONE, Asked their names.. come ti chiami?
And, in all this, no one asked for the names of the lost; nobody asked…
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Requiem for Tehran- 1 March 2026
One name confirmed. Mohammed Shariatmadar, a wretched, damned father stood outside the wreckage unable to process, to believe what he was seeing, hallucinating.
His six-year-old daughter survived the first strike, he received the call, but didn’t make it in time.
- Sara Shariatmadar. - 2nd grade student, was among the first killed.
- Zari. - First grade student
Her father found her math book in the rubble. Her homework still inside.
Blood-stained backpacks photographed at the scene.
Only 2 of the 163 names the world didn’t ask for.
Do you know any more names of these angels taken before their time? Tell me, I’ll name them…
28 February 2026:
The Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school, Minab, Hormozgan province, southern Iran. Girls aged 7 to 12, in their Saturday morning session when the first missile hit.
Triple-tapped, three missiles.
After the first strike the principal moved surviving students to a prayer room and called parents.
The second strike killed most of them there.
Death toll: approximately 180, per Iran’s Health Ministry.
Al Jazeera reports 165 schoolgirls and staff at the mass funeral.
Democracy Now puts it at 175.
Total Iran dead as of today: 1,332.
Analysis
NPR satellite analysis concludes the school was struck as part of a precision airstrike on a neighbouring IRGC complex, possibly using outdated targeting data. The school had been walled off from the base since 2016.
Neither the US nor Israel has claimed responsibility.
Disinformation:
Viral posts claiming Iran admitted its own IRGC bombed the school were rated false by PolitiFact; traced to a pro-monarchy Telegram channel, not official Iranian sources.
https://physicsandfaith.org/ledger-of-souls/
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¹ Leonard Cohen, The Captain, 1992
² Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH). Continuously updated figures, cross-verified by Lancet Global Health, February 2026.