They wear their bodies inside-out, some are ashes but few are dust. Vacant orbits, oblivious to the incoming tide and the percussive artillery from the heavily fortified positions on Rue de la Mort, view the world with equanimity. Their bloodied stillness at odds with the surrounding tumult.

It’s at times like these - pinned down behind a burnt-out vehicle, the sand skipping around me with the phut-phut-phut of spent rounds - that I envy them their final freedom. Not that all deaths are as elegant and instantaneous as a well aimed bullet to the head.

It is a fleeting thought, hardly even that, a whispering somewhere in the background of my consciousness, like listening to a low-tuned wireless. And with victory as with defeat - with the ear-ringing silence - the whisperings become louder and more persistent.

Right, left; up, down; stop, wait; walk, run; sink, swim; live, die. Some pray to survive, other’s yearn for the sweetspot, the one shot ****. Regardless, there is no doubt that we who remain will fight on for weeks, for years, for decades and continue to live the uncertainty of the living - sweating bullets until kingdom ****** come.

Brother, our young summers held us in a long chain like the phalanx of bronzed soldiers forward flung,
And the lion was skinned and hung out to dry like the sunned-fur of the beach at Marathon.
Brother, help me to dream again.

Brother, our yellowed days shook us like serried Hoplites of an atomic age,
Shoulder to shoulder, friction rubbed, all ranks split from the fissioned-flanks.
Brother, help me to dream again.

Storm-footed Titans of heat, dust, and irradiated wind pry from a ruptured Tartarus,
The flanks are an open pulse; the scorch-song thirsts for its sea-cooling to stone.
Brother, the lion lives that wears your skull around its mane.

Brother, dream of me again, of Persian arrows and lances,
And my fallen eyes instead of yours pouring in
With a sea of lavender water and mists
And summers of once-were.

Masks painted with understanding.
Butterfly stings kiss my body.
This wicked nightmare sequence is recurring.
The canyon deep scars are my autobiography.

Well-hidden they are under a forced smile
Under the navy jeweled sky.
Rapped and cradled like a pregnable baby,
I sing softly a heinous lullaby.

The stranger in the mirror closes in.
The veiled battles I fight will end in my defeat.
My lily covered mattress awaits for me
Is this my retribution?

I drunk the poison labeled love,
I kissed thy lips of the unknown.
My arteries and veins are drained of warmth
My feeble heart couldn’t take it anymore.

It isn’t built for vile words,
It isn’t created to withstand restrained,
But smile I tell my semi-living self.
Smile;

Serpentine shaped promises,
Slither their way to my conscience.
Love is addressed in corrupt angel voices,
Clouding my sanity.

May the light shine upon the darkness.
May the ruined mend.
Music can speak louder,
Than any word spoken.

It will all be over soon,
When the clock strikes twelve.
When the sun goes to bed,
The night will hold you in a motherly embrace.

Smile my little soldier,
Smile with the crumbling smile you have left.
It may be broken but it’s beautiful
Smile my little champion;  

©2019

-Daphne Bellfield

I am wide awake. Awaiting answers, a love story, and a place that feels like home. But what happens when the answers arrive, I love, and I’m home. True bliss won’t begin until the fighting for basic necessities is over, and everything I thought I had to fight for won’t matter anymore. Fate in revenge, even for the empathetic.