Two boys,

Barely men

With ash blonde hair,

And soot stained skin

 

In a peaceful life

They would be friends, or kin,

But, in this war-torn world

Neither would live to see who would win

 

Both twenty-two

With, an invisible vision of victory,

Marched forth through

Troubled towns.

Both soldiers set up for different teams

In a faraway land with promised dreams

 

An idealistic notion

That they would return home, heroes

Mothers pacing on cobbled stones,

Rounding their edges further with

Holed soled shoes

 

The basic concept,

Fight or die

Or be willing to give your life

To try

 

Not knowing the ramification

Of their leader’s actions,

Sat in crumbling towers

Deciding their fates

A pin on a tactics board

Surrounded by a faction

 

Both boys fell at exactly the same hour

In a field now decorated with

Symbolic red flowers

 

Blonde hair, stained with blood

And, boots not fit for purpose,

Married to mud

 

They would never know the outcome

Or how the world would recover,

Their names a broken whisper

On the lips of each grief-stricken mother

 

One is eternalised in a stone

Carved of marble

That glistens in the sun,

To commemorate the soldier

Whose country fought and won

 

One is immortalized on a grey

Lump of stone

His name obscured by moss,

To forget the soldier who fought

And lost.

 

Written by Lisa Millard