long gone, memories fade.
he's gone, his pictures on my bedpost -
I am a failure, I couldn't save him,
the enemy took him, all I could do was watch, handcuffed.

beside the dusty curtains, I stand -
staring at the dark brown coffin,
in which lay, a piece of my heart
struck with a rifle's bullet.
a soul of seventeen lost her twenty two pieces,
now, she's bleeding, bleeding in an pool of blood.

they march down to the alley,
in the graveyard, he lay -
they salute, they drape the flag around him;
everyone cries, no one feels a single thing.
my veins constrict, my temple still engraved with his mild kisses.

I envision him as a delusion now,
he ain't standing down the hallway anymore -
his trench coat hanging by my wardrobe,
my soul ached, lay right on the bed,
smoky thoughts, grieving of my dreary loss.

why can't science bring back a dead man?
what chemical would it take to burn a man in, to bring him back?
what pixie dust from Tinker Bell should be sprinkled on a dead man's soul?
no answer. silence persists.
so, I stay on the floor, crying,
despair, dying, less daunting and more scary.

my eyelids blink back,
my subconscious mind takes me back to the trail of those memories,
down the lakeside, on a bank
sunflowers blossoming, in my heart of hearts,
naive little souls, lying on the grass -
staring at the lonely sky,
he whispers in my ears, o' my, it's cupid's secret message.
hand in hand, me in my mother's teenage outfit,
two years before a world war that you'd read, years later,
my heart survived in merry,
it's in pieces now, with no peace at all.

he was sent to the army,
he fought for his motherland,
he didn't lose, he won -
he was hit by the opponent's bullet,
so, he fell on the ground;
on a cloudy, smoky day -
he breathed last,
still murmuring my name -
the candles blew out in my room,
it was an evil omen,
the news came the day after.
he was dead. breathless, bloody, in a worn out armour.

fell I on the floor, in screams and mourns,
"rest in peace", said it over and over again -
never worked quite enough for me anymore.
slept on the wrong side of the bed,
tears softening the pillow covers,
his smile incised at the back of my head.

when I stand at the empty aisle with the bouquet and a veil,
I want everyone out of breath to awaken,
death will touch us, untimingly.
to spread peace in this world is what we need.
but non violence still persists.
people kill, people die.
who's responsible? mankind.
you'd never know, you're jealousy and enmity,
would ever lead to the loss of the love of my life.
we'll never change, until the change is brought out from within,
hear my crown fall, while others rush to pick it up, but never for me.
the ones that do will be banished.
the ones who survive will be the fittest.
but isn't mankind becoming sicker with all it's crooked sicknesses?
hear the gun shoot.
another one of us would be dead out of hatred.

                           - Anurima Mukherjee

P.S. - A young woman has lost her lover who happens to join the army at a younger age. He meets death from the opponent's rifle. But the girl isn't over it. She wants peace and justice for her young lover and that's exactly what we need right now.