A fighter. That’s what you are.

Sometimes you put on your armor, and you march into the battlefield with your head held up high. You raise your mighty sword and fight like a lion. The battlefield is your kingdom. You reign over it. You own it.

The fire in your heart lights the night sky a crimson red.

You fight on and on, and you triumph against all odds.

At other times you struggle. You could barely lift your sword. Your shield weighs you down, and you falter. Your terrified you might lose. You cry tears of blood, and your wounds reopen. “What then?” you ask yourself. “What then?”

You go on fighting. You keep on moving. You came this far ahead and you can’t stop now. So, you fight.

You fight, when the sun is high in a cloudless sky.

You fight, in the midst of a great tempest.

You fight, with the strength of a raging fire.

And when you feel that your knees are about to buckle, and you’re about to collapse. Remember that you have been standing all this while, and you wouldn’t die in vain.

At least you fought till the end.

You lived a fighter. You died a fighter, and you shall be remembered as one, because that’s what you are.

The Boy with the Lemon Hair

His corpse lay under the rubble. A mound of broken bricks and shattered glass. The remnants of a neighborhood that is no longer.

His ashen face looking up at the sky as if asking whomever there may be, “Why?”..“Why did this have to happen?”

It was so peaceful, yet everything had to come tumbling down.

The bombs hit. A blinding white lights up the night sky. A thundering sound shakes heaven and earth, and then silence. Death creeps closer and starts tearing away life, one by one like picking out flowers in the field.

A girl comes closer and kneels next to the boy. Calls his name with no avail. Silence is all she hears. She shakes his body, and yet he doesn’t stir. Lifeless, he stares at the empty sky for a tomorrow that will never come.

His love, killed before it blossomed. His kiss, taken away abruptly. His dreams buried before they saw the light.

She will never hear “A kiss saumensch?” from the boy with the lemon hair again.

Inspired by: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak