Another War

I cry out at the injustice of the world. I watch my friends die. Flames envelope the buildings I called home. My country is in ruins, the planet: a roiling mess. All I know to do is shout at the sky, hoping there's a god somewhere who'll hear me scream.They start as a prayer, my cries for help, and they form into a tempest. I watch me friends die like butterflies caught in a net, killed for the beauty of destruction, for the benefit of someone so wealthy and far away that I do not recognize the world they're in. I do not recognize them as human. They are a monster, a vengeful god who was given the left overs of an experiment long doomed to fail. We are the left overs. I am what's left over. And I wish I could say that that made me better somehow, that it was somehow worth it in the end, that I'm a better person, that I've gained some knowledge that'll sustain me through the ages, but none of that is true. I'm not better, and no matter how much knowledge I gain, it could never be worth this much agony. It could never be worth the lives of my friends. It could never be worth feeling of my own soul suffocating under the weight of tragedy. It could never be worth dying, touching peace... then being ripped back to the present, into a world so full of sorrow that nothing else is left. Even now, I feel bombs shaking the floor above my head. I'm underground, in a place where the war is a distant echo that reverberates through every nook and crany, starving our children, depriving us of the sun and the chance to feel safe, both things I learned to value as soon as they went away. I break my back trying to end this, end days that never come to an end, each moment unleashing a cataclysm of such destruction that a child's worst nightmare pales in comparison. The only thing my work changes is how much it hurts to fight. I don't want to keep living like this. I don't want to keep living at all. I need a god. I need a god who will save us from the horrors of war. Even as I write those words, I know a god will not come. The gods have forgotten us and its time I forget them to. I look around. There's a baby crying, a father injured with a spear and there's blood on the apple a mother is holding. She takes a bite. She doesn't even notice the blood. I look into her eyes, they're numb. She doesn't shake when the room trembles. She just sort of sways. I can't handle this. I can't watch the husk of a being endure. For then... then I will become a husk too. I'm breaking, just like this broken world. I'm breaking, I might be cracked open to find a reflective jewel, but there is nothing to reflect. The light is all gone. Instead of shining, I absorb. My insides fill with the cries of an eternity, my mind with the screams of mothers and fathers and parents, my soul with the silent agony of those who are dead. It doesn't go anywhere. I just sit. With desperation, I pick up my pen for one last sentence. This is the end, for there is no way I could express anything close... A few ink splots hover over the page, a tear from my pen that my eyes will never shed. I am numb. There is too much, for even reality to comprehend. I am numb, a husk. My pen, more alive than I am and my sword more broken than I shall ever be. I am numb. The war is over, because I have given up.