They are the only ones who did not volunteer. I am the only one who hears their pleas for mercy. Ten innocent victims with hollowed eyes and soggy cheekbones. Ten who did not deserve it, but were taken. Ten forgotten justifications, accepted by the public. Inside their caskets, they feel nothing, but years ago, their cries stopped short of an echo.
Their secret is slandered. They send whispers far beyond our listening ears. They fade in and they fade out and lay between bayonets and bombs but hide amongst those who were born for this and their overshadowing stories. This is where you’ll find them.
Let one forget their unwilled suffrages, he’d feel no flames or wraths of war, no pain to teach a message of gore. Learn, Learn, Learn they say when their story repeats. They fail to teach.
When their souls are too old and their bones too deep to keep preaching, when they have turned to soil in the dirt, then it is us who feel the flames. When there is nothing left to keep the peace. Ten whose lives mimic the previous. Ten who fall before our feet and beseech the world for an explanation. Ten whose stories were buried with their bodies.