Lost Children

When I close my eyes to sleep at night

She is the one whose voice I hear

Wailing through the witching hour

Her cries; long painful odes to heaven

That pierce my heart, and leave my soul bereft

She’s the mother whose son, the soldier

will never come home again

Lost to these depraved marauders

who wish to paint our world

their ghastly shade of violent red

She’s my sister, who was never born

Her mother took a bullet to the chest

and a machete to the belly

The cost of living in a land

where men have turned to beasts

She’s the strange woman in the marketplace

dead eyed and filthy

forever in motion, mumbling to herself; and

weeping quietly for the man she loved

and lost when Kano burned

She’s the mother whose daughter’s bones

are buried in a shallow grave,

left to rot in the dry, arid fields

of Kanemi’s ancient homeland

This, the price she paid to serve her fatherland

She’s the mother who sits all day in the sun

Crying for everything and for nothing

Waiting for news, for the day of mourning

She knows will come

As her lonely tears drop to the ground

To place a curse upon this land

When I close my eyes to sleep at night

hers is the voice I hear

howling for the lost children of strife

and for the nation that killed them all