The Wounded Army
Some are born to carry shadows in their bones—
to know the weight of stones
uninvited visitors throw.
We are soldiers in a war with no front lines,
an army of one
navigating minefields,
exploding bombs inside our minds.
We live in nightmares dressed as ordinary days,
chasing peace through smoke and haze
while hope erodes like shoreline
beneath relentless waves.
The armor we bear is heavier than lead—
each plate hammered from a scar,
each rivet driven through the tender parts
we've learned to guard.
Tears descend in silent streams:
salt trails mapping territories of pain.
Trauma swallows us in waves—
pulling us under, again,
again—
until we learn to breathe
in the spaces between drowning.
Memories cling like winter frost
to window glass,
distorting everything we see.
They haunt the corners where light fails,
cruel melodies on endless repeat:
the songs life demands
we learn by heart.
Do you see me?
I see you—
the same fractured mirror,
the same shattered view.
But still—
In the caverns of my darkest days,
in the marrow-deep ache of surviving,
I find a strange and tender grace:
a gift the light-touched never claim.
This appreciation blooms
in soil where others see only decay—
I notice what they hurry past:
the way dawn breaks on broken things,
how shadows teach the light to dance,
the fierce beauty of a body
that refuses to surrender,
the sacred weight of second chances.
Even as I grow bone-weary,
even as I break and bleed,
I see extraordinary beauty
hidden from those who've never grieved—
The silver veining through the cracks.
The strength in things that bend, not break.
The way the wounded recognize each other
across crowded rooms:
a glance, a nod—
the silent language of survival.
The poetry in what we had to forsake.
This beauty rolls in with the seasons,
then away with winter's breath—
fleeting, precious, sharp as sorrow,
intimate as life and death.
We who carry melancholy
see what joy alone cannot:
the full spectrum of existence,
the terrible beauty we've been taught
by suffering,
by surviving,
by singing through the pain.
We are the ones who know
that breaking open
is how the light gets in—
That the cracks are not the ending
but the place
where we begin.
Copyright © Victoria Jones | Year Posted 2026
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