Shadows of past lives whisper through the dark,

Lingering in devastated stories of families

Crushed into dust.

A lone bicycle wanders through a deserted park

To witness a metal swing sway in the wind,

Echoing with rust.

Families that thought they could live forever

Ached with bottomless pits of despair

As they tried to navigatee a world severed

From maps of memories, and histories laid bare.

All things die and change.

Our families

Our homes.

Our memories.

Our mortality is our only constant.

But war can create so much loss

Too fast for the brain to comprehend.

Too many lives.

Too many homes.

Too many streets.

Drift like dust in the wind.

How can you move forward

When so many shadows of past lives

Surround, infiltrate, and invade us?

Do you become a shadow yourself,

shrouded in the pain of darkness?

Or do you weave those shadows into your own existence?

And march forward and survive, as a form of resistence?

Breathe in every attempt to destroy you

And watch as the world comes through for you.