Life at War

The sky is a slate of smoke-filled gray,

mud-caked boots wear heavy,

and every breath tastes of ash.

Here, the wind carries whispers,

fragments of promises,

and names we’ve carved into blooded earth

unspoken prayers pressed into muddy soil.

*

Each dawn cracks open like a wound,

its light slicing the fog,

exposing the bones of the land.

Here, silence is not peace —

it crouches, lies in wait,

and each second stretches,

like a held breath we dare not exhale.

We trade glances, huddled in shadows,

learning to read fear in one another’s faces,

words unsaid but understood.

We’ve stitched our lives together in trenches,

patched them with laughter when we could find it,

but the air grows thin,

and our laughter sounds brittle, hollow.

Remembering, the scent of morning coffee,

the warmth of a kitchen’s hum.

Now, our senses are trained to metal,

to distant thuds that echo like thunder,

the shiver that crawls beneath the skin

when the quiet settles,

a void where life is supposed to breathe.

When night falls,

we speak of home in broken whispers,

hands tracing memory maps in the dirt,

while stars burn cold above us.

We know the names of constellations,

but not the road back,

and our dreams are stitched

with the fragile thread of tomorrow.

A note from the author:

The reason why I wrote this poem was because I watched the Film Lee. This movie was about the photographer Lee Miller who heroically, felt compelled to go to war and document the truth of the Nazi regime. Watching this film, inspired me to write about war. During the period when I studied for my BA degree, as some of you may know if you read my About Me article — I studied a year of Philosophy where a lot of my time was spent writing about war (which I have not shared yet), so this movie moved me so much. It stars Kate Winslett who played the role of Lee Miller brilliantly.

Also, published on Medium.com