Unlived Tomorrows

 

War took far more than names carved into stone.

It stole the quiet mornings never born.

The kettle sang, its silver breath in air,

yet empty chairs stood waiting by the fire.

Not only lives lost far on distant fields,

but futures dimmed beside a kitchen pane.

The bread lay whole, untouched upon the board,

and missing hands left silence at the table.

The stories fathers never told their sons,

the rusted hinges crying on the gate.

A garden plot lay waiting for the spring,

its patient soil remembering their steps.

The maps of lives once sketched in hopeful lines

were torn along the fragile edge of time.

Dry ink remained upon the unread page;

the pen hung still within a quiet room.

Written on an unread page:

"The greatest loss of war

Is not the life fallen on the field,

But the future stolen from the kitchen window

Dreams waiting at home that will never return".

Long shadows filled the patient hallway’s length,

while ticking clocks spoke softly into air.

A city's strength ran thin within its bones,

and fields grew thick with harvests born of fear.

For every soldier fallen far from home,

a thousand quiet worlds grow dark and still-

a chair unclaimed, a kettle left to cool,

a future paused upon a windowsill.