The Soldier's Introspection

by Temujin Frost

First Place

Beverly High School

Grade 12

Paint it red.

Let the lakes, once hosts of love, choke on the murky amber.

The paste.

The soothing cream to diseased lip.

Boils on the side of the tongue.

The fly carcasses on your mother's dining room table.

You'd kill just to see them again.

You, tainted, broken, rebuilt with staples, leather, brass, and porcelain ego thin as fine china.

Eyes bulging from your skull.

Muddy morphine veins popping from picked skin.

Soldier on.

Scattered dog brains on seaside rocks.

Rotting strawberry under violet skies.

Carcass glowing under moonlight.

The water ripples with guilty pearls.

Soldier, this is where your mind dies.

Chrome revolvers,

stainless, gleaming, and pure in comparison to any soul.

Endless summers spent swimming in sun-kissed skin.

The shimmering silver cross hung over her breast was forever tainted.

It's silhouette flipped, splayed and forever a guilty stain on my blood washed memory.

My walking deathbed memoirs.

Plagued, sweet, rotten,

happy.