The frontier was silent. 

The United States

A benevolent president,

Residing over her nation.

Steel skyscrapers adorned in glass fixtures pierced the clouds,

Industrial laborers gathered in the streets to honor her in bustling crowds.

Blessing her civilians, kissing babies,

All while bolstering her glistening B.E. 2 aircraft’s and devoted navies.

But she gently tucked me into bed every night,

Each morning I was awoken by her smile and the radiant sunlight.

The Ottoman Empire.

A broken king,

A broken wing.

He grabbed it off his hand, 

And threw down the silver ring.

Once a surgeon—carpenter at heart

Deficit of passion to mend a bone snapped apart.

Death draped the skin underneath his cheeks,

Sorrow slumbered in the depths of his soul for weeks upon weeks.

His subjects desperately flew to the west like flocks of crows,

He hated himself for leading a life consumed by shadows.

The Great War set our world on fire.

Ballistic missiles screeched from the sky,

Volleys of Maxim gun bullets flew high.

Ocean breeze swam over the raging flames, ash-cloaked debris, harrowing heartbreak.

Their divorce made me feel like a mistake.

Stuck in the middle between warring states,

Their yells echoed in my ears: sharp as knives and poisonous as venom.

I might trigger a minefield, so I say nothing.

I never loved your father.

Your mother is hysterical.

Your father is a narcissist.

She is ungrateful for everything I’ve done for her.

Don’t you remember the months he left us alone?

You are no longer welcome in this home.

And the trenches were carved into the landscape of my childhood,

Standing in the eye of a gunpowder storm.

Maybe if I was not born they would not have torn,

Apart and I would not be worn,

Down from existing.