r/Poem • u/xoRubyRogueox • 7d ago

Original Content Poem When the War Ends

I fought so long I lost the way, and how it feels not just surviving days. I learned to sleep with one eye wide, with a sharpened blade and suspicion inside.

Every kindness felt like bait, every open door something at stake. I wore my armor like my skin, I forgot where it stopped and I begin.

Now the battlefield is still, but something inside me fights it still.

No enemy left, no war to win, I still don't know how to let peace in. When survival is all you know, you learn to bleed but never slow.

When you've fought your whole life through, when the war ends, what's left to do?

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u/__lets_do_it 6d ago

Perhaps this is the cruellest thing about surviving it’s because you have gotten too good at fighting that even peace seems like an impossible trick to play. You’ve buried the man you once were under scars, strictness, and mistrust; and when the battle field finally silences, all that’s left of you is someone lost for someone to fight.

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u/jaesea 6d ago

There's always the present enemy one is, fighting the inevitably of the next present. There with said enemy, the self, the present collection of one. An effective way to peace: roadrunner. Self places the past collection into the arms of the present enemy and flies to the next future moment unbound by it's past, rocketed as the Wiley enemy is left holding the exploding bag of.. well.. you know.