War's Illusion of Beauty

By Aaradhya Sinha

You find it beautiful, don’t you?

When you smell blood and not bread,

when missiles sing louder than the rustling leaves,

when sirens drown the birds’ dawn chorus,

When your city falls into a blackout,

not into rivers of joyful light.

You find it beautiful, don’t you?

The war.

The anticipation.

The orchestrated suffering of all human beings.

The dance of death pirouettes prettier for you

than the swans ever could across seas.

In your war,

The soil forgets seeds

and remembers shrapnel.

The rain forgets how to nourish

and learns to erode tombstones.

For you, it’s all adrenaline.

For you, it’s all thrilling.

But have you ever seen it?

Through the rifled eye that fires,

through the soldier's breath as it gutters out,

through the mother’s prayer.

Do you ever see it from their side?

Or is their perspective too fragile,

for your ironclad fantasies?

You still find it beautiful, don’t you?

But do you smell it?

Do you taste it?

The charred marrow.

The singed lullabies.

The iron thick on your tongue.

The asphalt cracking beneath boots

too heavy with ghosts.

All you crave is history.

That today, in this war,

You’ll write it.

Well, congratulations.

You wrote history.

Signed it in blood.

Stamped it with funerals.

Have you ever seen it

from the flowers whose only purpose was to bloom,

But whose seeds now scatter in ruins?

From the monuments that once stood tall,

now melted into ash?

From the sirens

that have also learned to grieve?

Your history will be written,

Your monuments will stand tall,

only so the crows can dine higher.

You still find it beautiful, don’t you?

Now that nothing is left to love.

By Aaradhya Sinha