The War

She once haphazardly calculated the attack trajectory

of her spears and her Hellfire missiles

she once came at me with her hammer and nails

like she wanted to string me up

she once pulled her pistol and shot her gun

like she meant it

she committed her reserves to the flank,

she gave it everything she had

moved from black back into the red

she once tried to bury me

in the cairn she’d constructed

from stones of her silence

but now the cannons have grown camellias

and birds roost in the atom bombs;

through all of her thunder and flame,

her screams and her silence

she thought she’d won the battle

all along losing the war