In recognition of child soldiers and of the
widespread complicity in your use.
(recognize that I can never touch your pain)



no beliefs left to cling to
I write to the earth
a bereaved child
soldier to a war
I do not understand
deserter to a place
in myself I never knew
murderer of my principles
and of small things
in faraway nations
where men recruit small bodies
to fight wars they cannot understand
and which they know
far better than I
and far too
intimately

see two sets of wars
those whose names
I cannot pronounce
and those whose boundaries
have pronounced me
their enemy
setter of land mines
they taste
in the poisoned ground
writing our stories
on their withered tongues

on the skin we share
as the withering of worlds
draws us closer