The child soldier

Have your little hands fought for food, so that you may be fed, your young, parched lips wide open, your tongue searching, licking away at the remnants of a puddle, trying to quench an ancient thirst? Have you kept your silence, when your back was sore and red and the land filled with the dead, the hungry, the sick and the impoverished millions, because you feared you might never speak again? Have you ever held a gun, the cold metal of the death stick digging into your childish palms and tearing into your young heart, so that you might live to see another day? Have your half closed eyes remembered, the pain of a broken body, the sorrow of lost innocence when dirty, wicked hands plucked at you and threw you into the abyss of living death? Have your sobs no more echoes, are your tears dry rivulets of emotion? Is your innocent heart the lump in your throat, which you try so hard to swallow? Have you, my poor little child soldier, become an empty shell, another picture on the wall, on the news, a new symbol of hatered?

Renjini Rajagopalan