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The Harvest of War
Fields once golden with wheat
now grow only iron thorns—
shell casings, twisted rebar,
the blackened spine of a school desk.
Children learn mathematics differently now:
one crater = seventeen missing friends
two missing fingers = one less piano song
zero returning fathers = infinite evenings listening for footsteps.
Mothers carry their babies
across bridges that no longer lead anywhere,
their milk tastes of diesel and phosphorus,
yet still they offer the breast
because stopping would be the greater surrender.
Old men sit on plastic chairs
in the skeleton of what was once a café,
counting the same three names
on fingers that have forgotten how to fold in prayer.
The birds left first.
Then the laughter.
Then the difference between
yesterday and tomorrow.
What remains is a particular silence—
not empty, but crowded
with everything that can no longer speak:
the wedding dress under rubble,
the half-finished lullaby,
the text message that arrived
after the number no longer existed.
War does not end when the shooting stops.
It only changes uniforms:
from soldier to ghost,
from child to memory,
from house to wound that
the rain keeps reopening.
And the worst of it—
the very worst—
is how accustomed the survivors become
to carrying what should have been unbearable.
They wake up.
They boil water.
They bury what can still be buried.
They teach the next ones
which sound means run
and which sound means
nothing left to run from.
That is the longest consequence:
learning to live
inside the aftermath
as though it were
a normal country.
English
