The bright, yellow paint is chipping.

The  ivy vines are climbing the walls.

The war had started and it was abandoned.

A once beautiful house neglected in fear.

 

The windows are broken

and the door is hanging by one hinge.

A tornado had come through here.

A tornado of men, guns and turmoil.

 

Clothes were strewn across the house

Antiques were shattered on the floor.

The war had killed the beauty of this house,

but had enhanced the tortures of its story

The story of a peaceful family.

 

A table flipped and dinnerware on the ground.

A teenage boy dead on the floor.

Bloody handprints on the walls and bullet holes in the stairs.

A broken railing and a dead man at the top.

Shot gun shells and holes in the destroyed door.

A woman lay dead by the edge of a cradle.

The mothers blood slicked down the edge of the bassinet

A blood soaked mattress

And a baby that lay unmoving with a torn and bloody onesie.

 

The destruction of this war is terrifying

and the World War 2 veteran can’t erase the scenes from his mind.

They stick with him as he ages until the day he joins the peaceful family

in the land of the dead.