Children of war, caught like stupefied rabbits, with shards of light piercing the night blackness; as if the stars had fallen from the sky and deserted the moon; that divided their innocence, into waking and sleeping, playing and dreaming.A beating and once welcome sun, now only highlights scenes of annihilation.

Sheets ripped into shreds, once crumpled around tangled unblemished limbs; a meagre veil of comfort in the sticky warmth of a hate filled summer’s night; are now just bandages, and stopgap tourniquets for bloodied and splintered bone. Children of war, bare considerable pain, with trusting eyes which cry no tears.

Children of war, slumber in confined tented villages of roughened canvas, usurped from the secure solidity of construction, by exploding mortar shells and flying broken plaster, which caked their hair and clogged their nostrils. Patchwork Teddies, stitched and worn, lie in the crook of matchstick arms.

Rough-hewed bowls, hover at fingertip stretch, accepting of a ladle of sustenance, which will barely fill an empty belly that writhes in agony, tormented by the foreign invaders, microscopically small and breeding. Children of war, dip jugs into polluted rivers, to satisfy a longing thirst.

Children of war, grip onto a mother; whose arms are too burdened to carry them as she did before; dragging blistered feet from worn-thin makeshift plimsolls, as they skirt the craters on loose gravelled roads leading to exile. Fathers long gone, buried deep in the fight, burn in their hearts and minds.

Will they ever forget? Will they ever forgive? Will they strive for peace; or will they harbour hate? Will they become ambassadors, or will they gravitate towards martyrdom? What will happen to these innocents? Guilty of no crime. For children of war, grow into adults, and how the balance tips is up to us all.