Crimson Letters

This is dedicated to brave soldiers guarding peace:

As that rare sound beckons my heart,
My heartbeats grow far less apart,
Comes forth the postman with his poisonous grace,
While we look on with so much a mind as a blank face,
Trifled he opens that harmless bag of letters,
Doesn’t know how many hopes he today shatters.

With my name called, my rifle does kiss the ground,
And mimes out for long every deafening sound,
My fingers that stand firm drenched in crimson red
Shiver as I think of that what I’d than read be rather dead.

I run away from every sore eye
Back against the wall I can’t help but cry
Slides out a picture of my darling girls
Amy combing Maggie’s pretty curls.

She’s grown so much they look like sisters now
Into thankful prayer my head does bow,
I sweep my fingers on that bejeweled ink,
The paper smells of Amy cooking at the sink.

Maggie says last night she heard mother cry,
‘Almighty Father, You can’t let him die’
She hugged mama but Amy couldn’t look her in the eye,
‘Why doesn’t Dada call us mommy? Why?’

How can she tell you, my brave brave wife?
Of that last bullet spared ma life
But took away calmly that voice so bright
That sung her the lullaby with the falling night.

She wrote that she had straight A’s in class,
But at her birthday she cried for only her father was scarce,
She said she barely remembers my face,
And unlike mum, she had stopped knocking on heaven’s grace

I live on every scavenged memory of her smile
‘Dear one, I’ll be back it’ll only take a while’
I try to write behind her picture,
But not long before the siren beckons me
Into bloodshed again to venture

The letter dropped into my trunk
The picture in my pocket,
Rifle in hand I stand up on my feet,
Eyes on the envelop,
Hoping that if I’m not back
Rest of those precious words to read;
I shall breathe my last, knowing
That like Maggie’s
There are millions and millions of smiles 
That have been and shall be there,
For I have lived and died

I look, one last time, at that pile
Of their unanswered letters
And I can almost hear them cry,
“Dear Papa come back!”
“Darling don’t you dare die!”