Lies woven into olive wreaths

Men wearing crowns uphold their sacred emblem –

They extend an olive branch.

Organize round tables on their next audacious conquest.

Fill the banks with our blood. Build crisp note forts.

Offer helpless smiles to the victims of the wars they sell.

They empty the bowels of our earth for oil,

tie a string end to end

observe our vain attempts to cross the chasm.

Listen carefully to the thud of our bodies

pile up in their golden holes.

Plant poppies in our rice fields

then kill our spindly limbs and swollen bellies.

Their honeysuckle voices judge the massacre of terrorists

riot.

As we are led to the rooms

and the Zyklon fills our lungs behind the flying cerulean flag,

mothers and their children, hum a long-forgotten prayer.

They will hang.

And brittle bones protrude from the fractures of his neck,

as Agesilaus hangs, the grey-blue toes barely touch the ground.

in Vouves, of a firm and twisted tree,

Agesilaus hangs from a firm, twisted branch.

Fat worms make their way through the gaping hole in his mouth.

And a swarm of flies feasts

on Agesilaus

giving yellowed flesh.

The author is a class 11 student of Cantonment English School and College, Chattogram. His work has already been published on a few online platforms, as well as in SHOUT magazine.