This is written for all the child soldiers.

i.

My dad used to say,

you are not a man until you have touched the moon.

ii.

The day I was taken was my birthday,

my mother made honey cakes.

But dropped them when they came.

I was roughed into the darkness.

Hard hands,

and cement eyes.

iii.

Every day was training day,

we are to fight a mans war,

because we are all broken roses,

put back together in the form of guns.

iv.

We were brought into a dirty room,

blindfolds with stains on them cover our eyes.

Knives breath down our necks

They tell us to

shoot shoot shoot

with the gun in our hands.

Our blindfolds are taken,

and our families lay,

sleeping in their death.

My eyes drip like their blood.

v.

Our hearts are stretched,

so they break into a million little pieces.

And we are left empty.

vi.

Our guns are part of us,

hurting and fighting is what we do,

I swallowed my love and it's not coming out.

vii.

To be strong,

and to be brave,

to have guns.

We must be men.

We are feared and that aura

expands our chests

and our minds.

viii.

Laying on the battlefield,

my innocence is broken more then my bones.

Dying,

Papa I can not reach the moon

with a gun in my hands.