Child Soldiers

In my country,

You three were beautiful

Dark skin and shaven heads

Against the frozen white

Older brother,

Muscled and sad eyed

You guarded your little brothers

Through cocaine killings and combat training

Then refugee camps and paperwork

To this frozen tip of peaceful land

They played

Amongst the refugee and immigrant kids

The promise of my country fulfilled

The pain of your youth forgotten

While we talked in our broken French

You charmed me with your innocence

A child

Fair haired, blue eyed

Pushed your littlest brother down

As all the children pushed each other

What could middle brother do

But what he had learnt

Children cried and pulled back from you

Parents yelled and glared

Teachers furrowed their brows, clucked their tongues

I guarded you in broken French as best I could

Fatherless and motherless and confused

Doing only what you had been taught

My country lied

You who had stayed together

Through raids and torture and terror

Would be sundered

Brothers put under an unknown mother

You sent to another camp

I hope

You do not hate us

I hope

You come to love us

I hope

Old lessons are forgotten

And new lessons are learned

In my country,

You three were beautiful

Dark skin and shaven heads

Against the frozen white