A Champion Dead

 

Home I brought,

His Champion, dead;

The father’s cries

Still ring in my head;

Cold, grey eyes

Stared up, undead.

A boy of seventeen

Now lay on his eternal bed;

To bring about his end

Had been my stead;

Guiltily, I look at his visage

On his immortal, wooden bed.

A decade old enmity

Had lain my parents dead

And now this innocent boy

Whose father stood with tears unshed;

Squeezing my eyes shut, I wonder,

Why couldn’t it have been me instead?

~Diksha