A selection of published essays, poetry, fiction, and music exploring memory, displacement, identity, history, and the stories we carry with us.
Essays
Before I Knew the Name
Published in The Times of Israel
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/before-i-knew-the-name
Where Was God When He Asked for Water?
Published in The Times of Israel
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/where-was-god-when-he-asked-for-water
Before We Understood What a Grenade Was
Published in The Times of Israel
A personal reflection on childhood, innocence, and survival during the Salvadoran Civil War.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/before-we-understood-what-a-grenade-was
The Roof Where I Watched the War
Some memories do not begin with fear. They begin with light.
As a child growing up in San Jorge, El Salvador, during the civil war, I often climbed onto the roof of my family’s home at night and watched the flashes of distant explosions across the mountains. At the time, I did not fully understand what I was seeing. Like many children living through conflict, I mistook war for something distant, mysterious, almost unreal.
Years later, I realized those flashes marked moments of loss for families I would never know.
That memory became the foundation for my latest essay, The Roof Where I Watched the War, published today in The Times of Israel. It is a reflection on childhood, memory, and the quiet ways war reshapes a life long after the fighting has ended.
You can read the full essay here:
The Times of Israel: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-roof-where-i-watched-the-war/
Thank you to everyone who continues to read, share, and support my work.
— W. E. Ticas
New Essay Published in The Times of Israel
There are memories that never leave us.
Not because we choose to remember them, but because they quietly become part of who we are.
Today, The Times of Israel Blogs published my latest personal essay, The Scream That Followed Me Home.
In this essay, I return to my childhood in San Jorge, El Salvador, during the civil war—a time when the ordinary rhythms of rural life existed alongside violence. Rather than recounting the war through battles or politics, the essay reflects on the moment when war stopped being something happening around me and became something I carried within me.
It is a story about childhood, memory, loss, and the quiet resilience of nature. Even as violence surrounded us, the wind still came down from Chaparrastique, the torogoz still sang, and life insisted on moving forward.
Like much of my recent work, this essay explores the relationship between memory, place, and identity, asking how a single moment can shape an entire lifetime.
I am deeply grateful to the editorial team at The Times of Israel for once again providing a home for these stories.
Read the essay here:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-scream-that-followed-me-home
Publication Note
Originally published in The Times of Israel Blogs on July 9, 2026.
The Boy Everyone Called Calavera Published in The Times of Israel
I am honored to share that my essay “The Boy Everyone Called Calavera” has been published in The Times of Israel.
The piece is based on one of my earliest childhood memories during the Salvadoran Civil War. It tells the story of a young soldier known only by the nickname Calavera and reflects on memory, compassion, and the quiet courage of my mother, who chose kindness in the midst of violence.
At its heart, the essay asks how memory survives war—and how small acts of humanity can outlive conflict.
My sincere thanks to the editors of The Times of Israel for publishing this work.
📖 Read the essay here:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-boy-everyone-called-calavera
Originally published in The Times of Israel Blogs on July 23, 2026.
The Bridge That Held Us Together
I am pleased to share my essay “The Bridge That Held Us Together,” published in The Times of Israel.
The essay returns to El Salvador in 1988, when a rabid dog bite turned a childhood medical emergency into a journey across a country fractured by civil war. Traveling with my older brother from hospital to hospital in search of scarce vaccines, I crossed damaged bridges, waited along roads disrupted by war, and encountered a country struggling to keep ordinary life moving amid extraordinary circumstances.
At its heart, the essay is about more than a bridge or a childhood illness. It is about an older brother protecting a frightened child, the hidden ways war disrupts everyday survival, and the people who continue holding a society together when its physical and social structures begin to break.
Read the essay here:
The Bridge That Held Us Together — The Times of Israel
Originally published in The Times of Israel Blogs on August 6, 2026.
The Mountain That Refused the War
I am pleased to share my latest essay, “The Mountain That Refused the War,” published in The Times of Israel.
The essay returns to the slopes of Chaparrastique, the volcano overlooking my hometown of San Jorge, El Salvador, and to memories of picking coffee there during the civil war. It reflects on the strange coexistence of beauty and violence: soldiers and helicopters passing through a landscape where the wind still descended from the mountain, coffee trees continued to grow, and the torogoz continued to sing.
At its heart, the essay considers what nature taught me as a child—that even in a country at war, beauty could endure, and that destruction did not have to have the final word.
Read the essay here:
The Mountain That Refused the War — The Times of Israel
Originally published in The Times of Israel Blogs on August 20, 2026.
New Essay Published in The Times of Israel: “The Tracks Left in the Earth”
“Nothing separated his life from mine except one unseen step.”
I am honored to share my latest essay published in The Times of Israel, “The Tracks Left in the Earth.”
Set during the final years of El Salvador’s civil war, the essay returns to a childhood memory from Cantón Joya de Ventura, San Jorge, where I met a teenage boy who had lost a leg to a landmine. We spent afternoons watching cattle in the pastures beneath Chaparrastique, while the wheels of his chair left narrow tracks in the soft earth.
At nine years old, I did not yet understand what those tracks represented. Decades later, I see them differently: as evidence of how war continues long after an explosion ends—and of a boy who refused to disappear after war had already tried to erase his future.
“The Tracks Left in the Earth” is an essay about childhood, memory, human dignity, and the consequences of war that remain long after the fighting has stopped.
🔗 Read the full essay in The Times of Israel
Poetry
New Poetry Published in New English Review (August 2026)
I am honored to share that two of my poems, “The Boy Called Silence” and “Aída, Whom the Dust Could Not Bury,” have been published in the August 2026 issue of New English Review.
Both poems are rooted in the memory of the Salvadoran Civil War and explore the enduring human consequences of violence, displacement, silence, and survival. They reflect my ongoing interest in preserving historical memory through literature and giving voice to experiences that risk being forgotten.
Every new publication reminds me that stories born from a particular place and history can cross borders, languages, and generations to find readers in unexpected places.
My sincere thanks to the editors of New English Review for the opportunity to share these poems with their readers.
📖 Read both poems here:
https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/the-boy-called-silence
Originally published in New English Review, August 2026.
Do Not Forget Us
Published in The Jewish Literary Journal
The Last Fruit
Published in Dark Poets Club
https://www.darkpoets.club/post/the-last-fruit
Anthologies
- The Last Visit — Voices in Verse 2026 Anthology
- Where the Dead Still Speak — Voices Israel Anthology 2026
- The Day the Ground Chose Another Child — Voices Israel Anthology 2026
Music
El Vestido Que Nunca Llegó
Instrumental Single — W. E. Ticas
Released August 24, 2026
El Vestido Que Nunca Llegó is an original instrumental composition that continues my exploration of storytelling beyond the written page. With no lyrics, the piece uses music to evoke memory, absence, and the emotional world of a story that exists beyond words.
🎧 Listen on your preferred streaming platform:
Ella Volvió por Él
Instrumental Single — W. E. Ticas
Released August 2, 2026
Ella Volvió por Él is an original instrumental composition inspired by a story of memory, separation, and reunion. Without lyrics, the music carries the emotional arc of a narrative in which the past returns and what seemed lost finds its way home.
🎧 Listen on your preferred streaming platform:
W. E. Ticas 