There was a time an eternity passed

A mother, a father and two children.

Bombs raining, oozing from crimson and clouds

Over commorancies of families

Into tombs, treasury, temples, and towns.

Five then ten, then a blur of duration

Explosions, cadavers in cannonade.

Ships sank seconds after sailing afar.

There goes daddy, then mommy by scorch marks;

Infected flesh, crisp ash from eye to heel.

“I'm hungry,” sister bellowed above screams.

Detonations licked at backs and bottoms,

A narrow escape, an abscond posthaste.

“I am hungry, brother. I'm so hungry.”

Those words, haunting, now and forever more,.

Red rashes, bug bites, lesions and lifeless,

Sister left at only age five, hungry.

Endless money, rationed goods, death was near;

Death was inescapable. Fireflies.

They moved with the grieving night wind and him;

Brother was left lone to perish away.

No mother, no father, and one child,

No one was left to witness the ending

Of brother, oh brother, astray, forgotten.