Beneath a blood-red sky,
and trembling ground,
the world holds its breath come December.
Perhaps, as soldiers raise their rifles,
they catch a flicker of fear in the other’s eyes—
and wonder if fear looks the same in every language.
If a uniform can ever hide
the boy beneath.
A boy whose mother sets the table for one too few.
A grandson who still dreams in the scent
of his grandmother’s holiday dinners.
A father who traces his daughter’s name
into frost with a gloved hand.
So why, come January, must the rifles fire again?
Maybe because the silence felt more dangerous
than the enemy.
Maybe when the body grew tired of bracing for death,
and the trigger finger stiffened,
and the aim began to drift—
in that slackened space,
a painful memory slipped in.
Of hands that once didn’t know how to make a fist.
Maybe, in the silence,
there was time to wonder
if peace could come
in the split second when one man remembers
that the other was once a boy,
sleeping soundly on Christmas Eve.
And maybe by January,
we’re ready to forget again.
Maybe that’s what December is for—
not peace, exactly,
but the fragile possibility of it.