We say we remember.
We don’t.
If we remembered, we would dismantle the machinery, not polish it for a ceremony.
We’d ask what the fuck we’re actually honoring, and who benefits from the sanitization of memory.
It’s not remembrance.
It’s performance.
And why only remember the fallen?
Of course we should remember the boys turned to men too soon,
who moaned on battlefields bleeding from wounds no one came to tend.
We should also remember the children burned alive and buried under rubble.
The women raped.
The fathers executed in front of families.
The civilians erased by strategy.
We say war is a sacrifice.
Sacrifice for what?
And don’t lie to yourself and say it’s for peace.
There is no peace.
There is only a pause.
Preparation.
Profit.
Posturing.
The sacrifice isn’t shared.
The poor go to fight.
The rich go to meetings.
The generals get statues.
The dead get numbers.
The survivors?
Trauma. Silence.
This isn’t about who fought bravely.
Though bravery exists. And so does love of ones homeland.
But the machine doesn’t care about either.
It uses those words as decoration.
It feeds on virtue and parades vice.
And still we celebrate.
We barbecue.
We say thanks.
We say this is our land, but we’re on top of the bones of those we decimated to get here.
As if names etched into stone erase history and what’s still happening.
War doesn’t end.
It rebrands.
It relocates.
One generation calls it liberation.
The next occupation.
The truth is buried under the rubble.
And then there’s the ones who get no honorable mention.
The deer that ran into barbed wire.
The birds turned to dust by shockwaves.
The land that can’t feed those who survived.
The waters choked with bodies and poisoned with waste.
What monument do they get?
Who lights candles for them?
If Memorial Day means anything, let it mean all of it.
Let it memorialize everything that war takes.
What it really takes.
Not just from soldiers.
From children. From women. From elders.
From the soul of the world itself.
Let it be a day we admit what war really costs.
A day we ask ourselves if we’re ready to stop paying.
A day we imagine a world without it.
War is a machine.
War is violent.
War is vicious.
War is unnecessary.
So today I do remember.
The men in battle.
The children in rubble.
The women violated.
The elders burned.
The animals displaced.
The land laid waste.
Today I remember the cost of war for everyone.
For everything.
In all nations.
At all times.
Remember them too.
And remember, war is unnecessary.
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