The Young Writers Project selection this week is "A Letter to War" by Fiona Goodman.
A Letter To War
By Fiona Goodman
Grade Five, The Academy School
A sense of anger,
betrayal,
pure outrage at what you have done
fills my body.
Overwhelming all other emotion,
blurring my mind into an endless wasteland of murder.
Tearing me,
from the inside out.
Pause for a moment,
look at what you have done to our universe,
the world we all cherish.
Look at all the lives you have taken as if they are your playthings.
Look at this mess of anger
that you created without a moment's hesitation.
Look at what you have done.
Tossing aside lives as carelessly as one would toss away garbage,
destroying all in the name of "fun."
What do you think you are doing,
destroying our minds and souls,
driving us into an endless cycle of murder?
What can you hope to do
by killing thousands?
What is your purpose?
Have you one?
No man or woman can resist you.
Such is the power of war.
You manipulate our minds,
ruin our hearts
and sense of righteousness,
then drive us into an endless cycle with joy.
Who are you,
to feel no emotion,
to think never once of the lives you are taking?
Look at the woman you drove soldiers to kill.
She had a family,
newborn children,
a life.
And you destroyed it in fun.
You heartless monster of war,
find it in the black empty abyss of nothingness where a heart should be
to think of the lives you are taken.
You have no purpose but an endless cycle of hatred and slaughter.
Have you a purpose?
Remember it.
You were never meant to be a grotesque monster of war.
What was your purpose?
Do you not have mind enough to wonder what you are doing?
You are nothingness.
But nothingness has power.
You enter our minds,
manipulate us with hatred and revenge,
and drive us into battle like toy soldiers.
Grotesque monster of war,
you must have some glimmer of peace in you yet.
Have you never thought of humankind as individuals,
or always as a mass of obedient inferiors?
What do you feel now,
your ocean of death corrupted by one sole voice of peace?
Can you hold your purpose now?
Or are you still driven by an urge to destroy all?
Find it in your abyss of nothingness to remember what it was like to be human,
to feel the breeze on your face, the moist grass against your feet.
Remember what it is like to be human.
Have you never wondered what if would feel like
to be separated from the murderous monsters,
to be the only voice of love in a sea of hate?
Have you never wondered what it would be like to be different?
Have you never wondered what it would be like to be able to cry,
to feel sorrow for lives lost at your own hand?
Have you ever thought about life,
rather than looking at the big picture
but seeing each individual as an individual?
Who are you to do this to our world?
How can you feel nothing but a need for hatred and death?
We can find even a little glimmer of peace and love,
and yet you can find none.
What have you learned,
in these dark years of suffering and death?
Have you received nothing but a sea of death?
Have you never tried to remember what it was like to live with nature,
rather than against it?
Or have you never once gone back to the days of peace?
Help me understand you corrupted heart.
How can I help you?
Can I help you?
Please, grotesque monster of death,
hear me as an individual.
Never have you thought of us individually. What was it like for you,
never knowing our thoughts and dreams,
forever in the darkness,
away from our passions and enemies?
Have you never experienced the thrill of a secret?
The love of an individual,
human or animal?
Have you truly never wondered?
Be truthful. Have you any thought of reversing your ways?
I will help you.
You are such a pitiful creature,
wallowing in death and dismay.
But yet you drive us to kill,
infiltrate our minds,
with no thought of our lives.
Who are you to defile our lives?
Find it in what you once called a heart to remember what it was to be human.
Find it in what you once called a heart to remember how to love.
