Rotting Brothers in the Congo Jungle

They sent our brothers into a war
not ours to fight, not ours to win,
into a jungle that whispers screams
where shadows swallow names.

A place where the earth drinks blood,
the soil too tired to weep anymore,
and the trees grow twisted with grief,
branches like arms that can’t hold them.

Mothers’ prayers travel miles,
but the wind is cruel—it drops them
in the dust of forgotten roads,
never reaching their sons’ ears.

Their bodies lie in a foreign tongue,
their bones writing poetry the world won’t read.
Rotting under a sun that never cared
to know their names.

And here we sit, safe in our borders,
our hearts too loud with silence.
What did we trade for their last breaths?
Was it worth it, this peace we wear like borrowed clothes?

Our leaders speak of “regional unity,”
but the unity they build is a bridge of skulls.
And the tears of the widows—they shine like stars,
but stars don’t bring them home.

How long must the sky bear witness?
How long must the wind carry the stench of war?
Our brothers are rotting, their laughter a memory,
their futures stolen for politics disguised as peace.

If you listen, you can hear their voices
rising through the soil, through the rot—
"Was it worth it? Was it worth us?"
And the silence answers, heavy and cruel.

But the silence won’t last,
because grief becomes fire,
and fire does not rest
until it burns the lie to ash.

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