The breath-takers face the heavens, as if waiting to shoot down your angelic silhouette once again. Even now, shrouded in polished bodies, dead locked triggers and silence they seem to be culprits denying guilt. These rifles will sound in time, echoing untimely sorrow, but not today. Today your comrades recoil in disbelief for they are each an integral part of your death. They are the right hand men to your fate. They are the ones who thought themselves men, till they saw your limbs blasted, your blood running red those grains and, creating side-winder veins in that sand. It was under that sun-scorched mountain-scape they felt themselves to be children. Except innocence had slipped and gone rendering them aged and powerless. Funny how you don’t notice that cool breeze till it turns to gusts speeding from your grasp. Your comrades carried you here from that rise and fall sand land. Your journey ends on this soil your lips would have kissed, had you not given that right to the masses. Today the scarlet stripes are folded and the stars of your eyes have taken their place among the fifty backed by night blue. Today the un-kissed soil swallows your wood-encased temple as if devouring your sacrifice. Today the tears of onlookers flow in salty streams smoothing stone-faced memories. Today a release for you binds and ties all those who kept their stars and remember the light that once poured from yours. They are friends some, family most and loved ones all. While halfway across this expanse they share, one more of war’s tragedies sends out a cry of impact to paint the land in morbid colors and make the heavens heavier.