The Girl Whose Ballet Shoes Were Taken

He watched her in her deepest sleep.

She was no longer

His favourite ballerina

She was now, instead,

A side effect

Of this war.

He watched her in his mind

Her rosy lips untainted

By the taste of death.

He painted,

Inside his head,

A life without her.

It was,

A future that lacked colour

A past that would hurt

To live with.

At three, she had wanted to be a firefighter.

At five, a pilot

Riding above the sun by day

Ambitious girl, wasn’t she?

At seven she became a corpse,

That died in vain.

The tanks in the streets came rolling

She turned into the ricochet

Of a gunshot

Into the ricochet of a thousand gunshots

All of them searing holes

Into his life.

He watched her choke-

He watched her choke

To death.

Eventually,

She let go

And buckled

Under the weight of a hundred cannon balls

Under an army of soldier’s boots

Their shoes going crunch crunch

Over a city of broken bones.

He watched her being tossed,

Atop a tangled mesh

Of white and red remains

The stench of human flesh,

Unrestrained, rose and

Slowly kissed her

Her blood-stained ballet shoes

Were snatched

From her feet

By soldiers

And given to someone else’s sister.