A selection of published essays and poems exploring memory, displacement, identity, faith, and survival.
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.
Poetry
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 (Forthcoming)
- The Day the Ground Chose Another Child — Voices Israel Anthology 2026 (Forthcoming)
W. E. Ticas 