Boys who fell in love with war

That’s all we knew,

Long nights of breaking glass

followed by a silent morning while we rode to school covering our bruises.

That’s all we knew.

Eating sweets and staying up late playing video games seemed to null the distractions of war.

And while the light from the tv screen reflects on our small faces, our glassy eyes drip and fade while we wait out another battle,

because that all we knew we how to do.

Running away as fast as we could,

trying to escape the battlefield

with friends who understood,

some felt like more than friends;

we were brothers, children of war.

We weren’t like the other boys,

the hardened personas we assumed set us apart from boys brought up in stable homes. They were oblivious to true fear and we envied them for that.

We had seen every shade of hate,

We had felt every inch of pain,

We sat and watched while our childhoods were destroyed and we layed defeated as our memories were painted with blood.

Blackened eyes and bruised backsides,

frantic 911 calls at midnight depicting a nasty fight. Watching the world go on as if I didn’t just die a little inside, all the whole holding in the tears. Trying not to let my younger siblings see me wounded. For them, I fight on. For them, this is a beautiful war, because as far as they knew, I was winning.