The Pyre :

Love forlorn and wisdom lost,

She sits there crumpled.

A pyre to her left,

A lit by the hungry flames of war.

A temple to her right,

Stripped barren by plunder.

She is alone, burned scraps of words

Burried deep into her arms.

They where the words of an empire,

Of a people.

 

There is blood and sadness all around her,

Even worse there is laughter.

Brutes, Savages, G-dless men from the East

Watch her burn her family.

 

They laugh as she gives them their last honor,

As she throws her son, her child into flames,

As her mother’s bones burn away like dripping candle wax,

As her husband’s tender lips remain no more.

 

This was war

And she survived because a leader,

A beast among men,

took a liking to a girl in blood.

 

Come here he’d whisper to her

And she’d spit on the ground.

Men would laugh.

He’d undress and grab her arm.

She’d claw and fight.

He’d snarl and nurse his wounds

And she’d dive for a knife, holding it to her throat.

The leader would goad her.

 

They knew suicide wasn’t honorable,

But they didn’t know she had pride.

Boys in her village would joke as kids do.

They’d call her suicide girl, for she wasn’t well received,

But as time went on she’d grow past that

And now she thought to resign to fate,

To a name long forgotten.

 

The blade cleanly and lovingly swept across her throat,

A tiny scarlet line on her pale skin.

 

They stood in shock.

She had killed herself, a defiant smile on her lips.

The naked man laughed.

He picked up her body and threw it in the pyre.

The barbarians wondered why

And the leader said this:

 

“We don’t know of G-d.

We know of three things,

Of war, of love and of pride.

Is this not a soldiers final act?

A lover’s greatest gift?

A human full of pride?”

 

The men nodded slowly, confused, walking away,

But the leader sat there a moment and smiled.

He would of loved to have her.

Turning away they moved on to the next village,

Where they all had much meeker women.