08/31/2025
This brought tears in my eyes. So sad š
On the left, life was still. A photograph frozen in hopeāa soldier standing tall, proud in his uniform, with the woman he loved leaning gently against him. His eyes carried strength, hers carried devotion. Together, they were looking at a future that seemed unbreakable.
But on the right, time had shattered. Eleven months in captivity stole everything but breath. The man who once carried strength now carried scars carved into bone and silence. His broad shoulders had collapsed into fragility; his uniform replaced by a worn hoodie that hung off a body too frail to fight the weight of memories. And yetābeside himāshe remained. Her arms wrapped tighter than before, clinging not to the soldier he was, but to what little pieces of him had made it back.
He returned home. But he did not return whole.
āThere was no sky there,ā he whispered, his voice cracking like dry earth. Only endless shadows, the smell of decay, food that felt like ash on his tongue. Nights of beatings, water poured over his trembling body until he forgot what warmth felt like. He remembered countingānot days, not facesāonly shadows of those who faded before him.
And still, he lived. But living is not the same as being alive.
At home, war followed him like an invisible ghost. Every creak of the house was a threat. Every knock at the door was a memory of chains. At night, his body shook not from cold but from nightmares too sharp to fade. Sometimes, staring into the mirror, he didnāt see himself. He saw the prisoner still locked awayāthe man who had not escaped, even if his body had.
She tried. God, she tried. She spoke softly, she touched his trembling hands, she whispered promises of a future they once dreamed. But each time she reached for him, she touched only a door bolted shut.
āDonāt come in,ā he would murmur through tears. āIām still there. I never left.ā
And so the war continued. Not with bombs or bullets, but in the silence of their home. In the empty spaces where laughter used to live. In the quiet battles fought inside a broken manās chestābattles no one could see.
Because some wounds never bleed, but they destroy just the same. Because some wars donāt end when the guns fall silent.
And because sometimes, coming home only means learning how to survive all over again.