Awakening

I built my walls from quiet pain,
Stone by stone, through fire and rain—
A soldier first, but still a man,
Holding weight no heart could stand.

In jungle hush and shadowed glen,
I watched the worst of what we can.
Guatemala carved its name
In places I could never name.

I carried blame like sacred fire,
As if I’d lit the funeral pyre.
Though orders rang and chaos reigned,
I wore the guilt, I claimed the stain.

I feared the monster in my skin,
Not from without—but deep within.
To guard the ones I loved the most,
I made myself a haunted ghost.

But time—unyielding, slow, and kind—
Kept whispering that I might find
That wounds once again buried in the sand
Could one day bloom if touched by hand.

And so I cracked, I let it break,
The dam I built to stop the ache.
And in the flood, I found a spark—
Not all I am is forged in dark.

The world grew new beneath my gaze,
A softer truth, a warmer blaze.
I saw the child beneath the gun,
The man who longed to feel the sun.

The blood was never mine to claim,
The acts, though witnessed, weren’t my name.
And though the past can never fade,
It doesn’t own the life I’ve made.

Now I emerge, no longer small,
Beyond the shelter of my wall.
I show the world, I show me too,
The soul I always somehow knew.

Not just a soldier with regret,
But someone rising stronger yet—
Not perfect, but at last, set free,
To live, to love, and finally be.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.