by Elliot Q., 15
The sky is crying; a never-ending torrent of grief and icy rain
pounds at the thatched roof of the little cottage.
Inside it is warmer, but the air is still chilled with a heavy veil of sadness. Sitting by a roaring fire,
soaked and shivering, a young boy
no older than five plays dutifully and somberly with a tin soldier.
Watching from her arm chair, face melting under the stresses of time and grief, his mother.
Tear tracks trailing down her face, the mother
turns her weary head to watch the onslaught of the wailing rain.
Her elder son, her own little soldier
had once sat here with her in this very cottage.
A young, smart, wonderful, beautiful boy.
The absence of his laugh is hauntingly silent, replaced instead by the crackle and pop of the fire.
The fever of war spreads like a fire,
thinks the mother,
taking from her her husband and brothers and then her little boy.
They had been dragged away into the cold rain,
leaving her alone in her too-quiet cottage.
Dying in battle, forgotten among the faces of thousands, so rich men far away could play soldier.
The clack-clack of the little tin soldier
marching along, painted uniform glowing in the light of the fire
mocks her, breaking the heavy silence in the cottage.
Heart twisting in her chest, the mother
tears her gaze away from the window, away from the rain
that had swallowed up her little boy.
Eyes dull, she watches her younger son, her baby boy
play quietly with the toy soldier.
Just like his brother, who’s interest in his little toy army lead him into the rain,
lost to the click of a grenade and the roar of unforgiving fire.
A sudden well of emotions—rage and grief and terror and helplessness—fills the mother.
She refuses to let him leave her too. Never again will she sit alone in her cottage.
And with an anguished wail that echoes through the wilting cottage,
pushing past the startled boy
in a raging storm of her desperation that she knows deep down will do nothing, the mother
seizes the little tin soldier
and flings it into the fire.
She crumples to the ground in a sobbing heap as the tin melts, her relentless tears mirroring the pounding rain.
Somewhere far away, in a forest half drowned in rain, stands an old cottage.
Inside, by the roaring fire, the pale ghost of a long-dead boy
watches on as their family’s next little soldier comforts his mother.
Fair Haven, New Jersey
Bridge Ink 