War

Post apoplectic. About the loss of hope and what it really means to die.

War

Blood pours like rain from the sky, staining everyone, everything, red.  Red in guilt, red in pain, red staining bloody hands.  We are all guilty.  There are corpses, burned, ravaged, mangled.  They take the place of our earth, feed our lands.  Life from death, food from pain.  Fires burn on the horizons, always glowing, always lit.  They never go out, never stop.  Just like the violence.  The sky stopped being blue a long time ago.  Blue is too peaceful for our world.  Now it is black with smoke and ashes, and sometimes it is red too- reflecting the crimson light that’s always shining.  The air is hard to breath, it seems to try to strangle you with every breath, twisting in your throat and lungs, clawing for freedom.  Like we do.  Like we always have, always will.  And just like the air, our struggles are useless.  They have made us dirty, tired, filthy.  Inside and out.  People don’t make friends anymore, just allies, just enemies.  Families are desperate, sordid affairs that always seem to end in grief.  They keep trying though.  Innocence was the first victim.  Then beauty, culture and happiness.  Hope was last to go, but stubbornness stays with us still.  Sometimes I wonder when that too will end.  You can hear the screaming, just out of sight, if you listen close.  I try not to.  The gunfire is harder to ignore, thunder that shakes the world with none of the brightness of lightning or the freshness of rain.  Even the rain seems red sometimes, like we’ve stained the very heavens with our wars.  I watch the soldiers march out, no more than children, really, and wonder when I will join them.  It won’t be long now before they come, knocking down the door and telling me my duty.  Sometimes I want to scream at it all!  Why is it my duty to die in a war that I wasn’t alive to see start?  Why do I have to fight?  Why are we fighting in the first place?  Everyone knows to live while they can, ‘cause the army comes soon enough.  And after that there’s only Death.  We are born with the clock ticking down, always, always ticking down.  Sometimes I look at the world- the blackened skies, the ravaged earth, the red people, and wonder.  Perhaps the world has already ended, and we just haven’t figured it out yet?