Battle of Hearts

4 1 0
by lavenderduck
by lavenderduck
                                    
                                              The world appears grey to people like us,
And it's colourful for the rest.
Our hearts of gold look silver,
And everyone else's looks platinum.
                          The platinum hearts that are nothing but bronze,
Shoot cannon balls disguised as words.
They mow us down as if we are grass,
And not people.
                          We put a cast of iron around our heart of gold,
And lock it in a birdcage of bone,
To protect ourselves
From the pain.

                          We live each day like it is a battle.
Each sunrise is greeted like it is our family,
And we have just come back from war.
                          The swords are small but mighty,
Chopping us down to smaller and smaller pieces,
Leaving battle scars that we cover with white lies.
                          The castles of grey stone and black catapults,
Hurling sticks and stones that break our bones,
Crossbows that shoot arrows into our spines,
And paralyse's us for the next volley to come.
                          We stand and we take the hits.
We let our armoured hearts become banged up.
We let it get chipped,
And we don't repair it.
                          We let the blood drip down our arms,
Allowing the crimson to dye the memories of when we weren't warriors,
And the days when we were free.
                          The drawbridges are tight ropes,
The moats are oceans,
And a lot of us don't make it. 
We fall and let our hearts drown in the tears of our comrades.
                          When you are only armed with sticks, 
How are you supposed to fight against swords?
The cavalry tramples our spirits,
And they add a few more cracks in our bone birdcages and a few more dents in our iron casts.
                          This isn't a fight where you line up and take aim, fire. 
This is a fight with guerrilla warfare,
But we weren't taught how to fight at all.
                          Hands blackened with the ashes of our friends,
Dirtied with the ground we buried the fallen under.
The once black iron is now covered in red, 
And our hearts are still locked up.
                          When a hand is offered to help us up off the cliff we have put ourselves on, 
We say no and keep struggling.
Because the hearts without armour are vulnerable and the hearts with armour feel dead.
                          But the hearts that refuse to go,
help us off the cliff that is a million miles long.
Those are the hearts that see past the battle scars and the white lies,
and past the cracked cages and the beaten armour.  
Hearts like that are the ones that give us real weapons and not just sticks.
                          The Hearts that know what being a survivor is like,
And how far that cliff is.
The hearts that haven't felt what falling is like,
But have a heart of true platinum.
                          They pull out our armoured hearts from
Our cages of bone.
They chip away the iron to find a heart made of gold,
And they plant flowers.