War Stories

cheekbone to cheekbone
huddled together, debris
of death, stench of mold
incapacitating their hope

outside children mimic
gunshots, as frontlines
ricochet with trembling
clouds, ancestral echoes

its horizon is washed red
in stained velvet of blood
thump of bodies like white
noise to their muted deaf

she wraps her shelled desires
in a shawl, a pilgrim walking
towards another minefield of
stilted silence, latticed prayers

his splintered bones washed
away by slant rain, a bird call
unending flight, a newborn is
swaddled in morphined nights