Moon at Half Past Noon

 (Discovered in a rusting ammo box near the Turkish-Syrian border,  wrapped in a Ukrainian flag and smudged with dates from the Euphrates…)

I. Origins of the Wound
 

I was born where steppe meets desert— 

where Soviet tractors once ploughed furrows 

straight as Kalashnikov barrels, 

where my father’s hands smelled of gun oil 

and my mother’s lullabies trembled 

between air raid sirens. 

They fed me nationalism like mother’s milk: 

Sunflower seeds and baklava, 

Pushkin verses and Quranic prayers, 

until I couldn’t tell whose earth 

I was meant to die for. 

II. The Tools of Belonging
 

At seventeen they gave me a rifle 

and a story about ancient enemies. 

The serial number outlived three owners; 

the justification changed with each border crossing. 

“Defend the motherland,” they said— 

though the map kept redrawing itself 

around our trenches. 

I kissed the dirt like a lover, 

never admitting she tasted the same 

whether called Donbas or Raqqa. 

II. The Revelation

Three winters I watched desert crows and Slavic magpies 

feast on boys who died with “Allahu Akbar” on their lips 

and those who crossed themselves with Ukrainian dirt. 

Their skeletons make identical wind chimes— 

Donbas orchards and Aleppo’s rubble 

singing the same bone-music 

to mothers who can’t tell which mass grave 

holds their son’s accent. 

The United Nations said we fought for 

“civilization’s sacred light,”

but the hospital we shelled Wednesday 

had the same IV bags dangling 

as the one where my sister nurses in Lviv. 

III. The Machinery

They’re phasing us out for Turkish drones 

with the patience of carrion birds, 

American smart munitions that don’t flinch 

when a voice crying “Mama” 

could be in either Kyiv Arabic 

or Mariupol Russian. 

The new death doesn’t descend— 

it unfurls from the stratosphere, 

a steel falcon riding thermal waves 

between Orthodox church spires 

and minaret loudspeakers. 

Its targeting software silent 

in the mother tongue of mathematics: 

“Target-lock-target-lock-target-lock”

in the binary of mass graves. 

IV. My Final Mission

Today I walk into the kill zone 

without my rifle. Let the cameras see: 

A man stripped of metaphors, 

just skin and stories due to expire. 

The Bayraktar circles like a vulture 

that’s read Sun Tzu. 

I may spread my arms— 

not in surrender, but to show 

the absence of wings. 

When the missile comes, 

I may smile for the satellite: 

“See? This is how a human dies— 

with too much memory, 

and not enough metal.” 

V. The Surrender

Above me, the drone tilted its camera-eye, 

a kestrel savoring the mouse’s pause. 

Its four rotors hum the oldest hunting song: 

“I-see-you-I-see-you-I-see-you.”

Its ritual death dance: 

precise as a muezzin’s call to prayer, 

relentless as a Soviet-era tractor factory. 

The laser painted my chest with the same red X 

that marks grain silos and maternity wards for annihilation. 

I laugh. Not at the machine, 

but at our shared programming: 

They taught me bayonet drills 

while this drone learned 

to distinguish between 

a dog and a soldier— 

but never asked why both 

sometimes carry children. 

The last sound was the click 

of its lens zooming— 

a predator moistening its lips before the first bite. 

When the algorithm finished its work, 

even the stray dogs mourned our passing: 

At least human soldiers 

Are sometimes missed. 

VI. The Epitaph
 

When my end came near a bombed-out mosque 

(its crescent moon now a shrapnel sculpture), 

I laid down my rifle— the barrel, still throbbing hot, 

I kissed the earth like a prodigal son. 

Now, the general’s son studies in Zurich. 

My mother’s hands shake wrapping 

other sons’ bandages now. 

My father uses scraps in tin and plastic 

to patch our ancestral home’s 

bullet-ventilated walls. 

I know they’ll plant me in the “Heroes’ Meadow” 

between a Wagner mercenary 

and a Kurdish YPJ fighter— 

our decomposition the only diplomacy 

left in this soil. 

They’ll turn my memory into a marble stone, 

another forever-young boy 

pointing a rifle at adjectives: 

Patriot. Hero. Martyred, forever.

Postscript: (in smeared pencil)


Tell them I fought innocently. 

My bravery a lie?

VII. Instructions for My Ghost

Plant no flags on my grave. 

The earth is tired of colors. 

If you must remember, 

take the trigger finger 

that once traced my daughter’s photo, 

and let it seed wild poppies 

where the border used to be. 

When the war algorithms ask why I fell, 

tell them: 

“He mistook his heartbeat 

for a ceasefire.”