Here's to the dead, whose stories we know:
To a red-haired woman who loved her son more than
her life, a life that clung to this world with nails and teeth
digging furrows into her flesh, her flesh that hung from
chains under the gleaming moon.
To a blue-eyed man who loved his wife more than
his people, a people who mourned his death with flowers
and wine and song and hate, bright hate that tore
an orphan to pieces.
To the innocence of children, who loved and received no love
in return, the murmurs of slurs and eyes that gleamed darkly
with fear, the fear of returning home to find only that
no one was there.
To the old general who loved until grief and time
whitened his hair and dimmed his eyes, eyes that were open
when a student he'd loved killed him on a rooftop in summer
in a village he'd led into war.
To the student, who loved and lived in fear
of loss, sorrow at a tombstone and the lie of white scales
that twisted him in the dark, a dark hell where he tortured
with methodical precision.
To the sage, whose love was tempered by life
and laughter and war, a war that shattered him
into pieces of unanswered questions and left him with
only we do what we can.
To the father, who loved his son less than oblivion
to pain, a pain of revilement and whispers that cut him
open and left him to bleed, blood that was sticky and warm
on his son's bare feet.
To the son, who hid his love and his scars with a mask
that didn't shield him from names on a tombstone
and the price of glory, stories glutted on the fat of
betrayal.
To the girl he killed, who loved him faithfully
with all of her heart, a heart that he punctured with his
hand wreathed in lightning, the flash of relief in her eyes
not to be dying alone.
To the boy who loved her unshakeably
as the tide, the tide of blood lapping at his heels
dying him red, the color of eyes and clouds
on a murderer's coat.
To the jinchuriki, whose love was carved
out of their souls, left vessels hollow and brittle
defenseless and dry, dry as the eyes at the
funerals they never had.
To a man they called demon, whose love was worth less
than his life, bleeding out on a bridge in the fog
under new-fallen snow, melting on strewn corpses
that could never redeem him.
To a beautiful boy, who traded his life for his love
and called it a blessing, a mercy extended to children
bound up in ice, ice stained with blood and the death
of a gentle soul.
To the people of a forsaken land, who feared to love
when the price was death, who starved in their homes
lest they lose more heroes to slaughter tyrannical
dealt with a grin.
To a red-eyed clan that loved like an open wound,
bleeding and festering and pouring out heartache
that couldn't be healed, and the white-hot blade that
burned their love shut.
To a red-eyed child who weighed one love against the world
and found the world lacking, sentenced to death
in a moonlit night, the first of many slaughters
on the blade of a pacifist.
To the children of Sound, who gave their love and their lives
as a means to a monstrous man's end, a bloody, painful end
executed by children in the woods, accepted as fair pay
for the smallest of kindnesses.
To a boy in the rain, who learned again to love
and to hope, hope that dripped away in the blood of a boy
with shining eyes, eyes ringed in circles of grief
and the wrath of a god.
To a girl in the rain, who loved folding paper
to make her friends smile, her friends who died as pawns
in a madman's scheme, a man she faced under a prismatic sky
and fought to the death.
To a murderer who loved to kill and called it art
in splintered lives and violent deaths, the explosion
of gleeful murder by someone who could
could also die.
To the monsters who forsook love for undeath
and carved-out hearts; hearts stitched together into
a patchwork of fear, a heart at the center of a puppet
vulnerable still.
To the man killed by monsters, who loved to play shogi
and always lost, the last ember that winnowed away
into ash and smoke, the smoke at his tomb where his student
resolved to kill.
To the soldiers, who carried their love to their deaths
on the battlefield, not too young to fight and die
for cousins and comrades and children who would
carry on when they fell.
To the mothers, the fathers, the orphans
the outcasts, the killers, the wanderers
the heirloom necklaces
the crimson eyes
the warriors doing their duty, the heroes
with bloodied hands.
Here's to the dead, whose stories are lost:
Once, you loved.