Lately, it feels as though the world has become a catalogue of broken stories.

Headlines carved out of women’s pain.

Pains folded into statistics, and hashtags rising like smoke from a fire we didn’t start but somehow burn inside of.

And in the quiet corners of my mind, a question trembles,

one I’m almost ashamed to admit out loud:

“Am I next?”

Because the victims thought it would be someone else and not them.

But they have a way of cutting our expectations and making us the social media recitations on news headlines.

I ask " Am I next".

Because if I had asked Ochanya, she would have thought it was a phrase.

A phrase that became her fate.

I ask " Am I next?" 

Not because I am weak,

but because the society I inhabit has mastered the art of making women feel perpetually endangered, as though our existence is a negotiation.

As though our survival is a matter of probability rather than right.

Every new report feels like an indictment on humanity itself.

Assault.

Rape.

Femicide.

Patriarchal violence masquerading as culture.

The unending, senseless erasure of women.

It bruises my spirit in ways my vocals can barely hold.

When I have to tell someone my every location, " I've arrived " Because if I don't, I might be in the next news headlines, and definitely the next food for hungry bloggers.

And somehow, I feel guilty.

Guilty that I am here, still breathing,

while someone else’s life was extinguished without sympathy.

Guilty that I cannot save every girl whose story becomes a warning.

Guilty that caution has become the inheritance of womanhood.

That we must measure our steps like we are walking through a minefield.

But beyond the grief, beyond the fear that tries to colonise the mind,

there is a quieter truth- a fragile but stubborn flame of hope.

Hope lives in the collective outrage of women who refuse to be quiet.

Hope breathes in the resilience of girls who rebuild themselves after shattering.

Hope rises in the conversations we are now brave enough to have,

in the laws we make and the justice we demand, in the courage that refuses to be muted.

So when I whisper,

“Am I next?”

I also say, beneath my breath,

“We won't stop advocating.”

Because women are learning not only to survive,

but to insist on a world that does not require survival as a skill.

A world where our bodies are not crime scenes waiting to happen.

Where our names do not trend only in death.

Where safety is not a privilege, but a necessity!