I.
the first time they kissed
it was on the battlefield, the wind wept,
soaring the scent and scrapes of iron, Death’s harvesting season
across the shell-torn ground, blood-sopped & salt-seared,
Cupid an archer lost in the trenches,
his arrows bowed like question marks—
O when the saints go marching in,
hallowed a hymn through the hollow of a gun barrel,
while the mud wrote an autobiography,
built their names in bullet braille.
II.
someone said war was an old man\'s game,
but the young played it like lovers—
fevered, reckless, dying to be touched.
he traced a scar down the other’s jaw,
whispered, I have measured out my life with spent casings,
counted the rhythm of artillery as heartbeats.
III.
the moon, poor orphan, drowned in a crater,
as they made their beds of ruin.
the shrapnel knew their ribs,
found them softer than bone should be—
a city in them collapsing, collapsing—
two statues of salt turning back at the same time.
IV.
you who read this, tell me:
how does a boy hold another boy in war,
without making a grave of his hands?
how does a love survive where even names don’t?
they called each other everything but their own,
called each other come back to me.
V.
the last time they kissed,
it was on the battlefield—
only one still standing,
the other folded into the earth.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond—
and the world did not end,
but god, it almost did.