My thanks to Rochelle for her photograph this week and for the continued support she gives to all the Friday Fictioneers.  Each week she posts a photo prompt and urges us all to ‘say what we see’ – I apologise in advance for my mood this week. The news stories and film clips from the many war-torn regions of the world have occupied my thoughts for most of the week, to write anything in a lighter vein has proved difficult.

Copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Genre: Creative nonfiction

Word Count: 100

In Harms Way

In the early morning we claw at the overnight rubble and debris searching  for the missing. The children are terrified, the women distraught.  The angry and patriotic young men talk of taking up arms, while their mothers weep.

What rains down on us from the heavens is making our land barren, what little food we had is almost gone. Clean water is rationed and in short supply. Cats and dogs lie dying in our streets; it is only a matter of time.

War mongers and posturing politicians lie safe in their homes; their strategy reduces ours to dust, to memories.

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Man was made to Mourn: A Dirge – Robert Burns

Many and sharp the num’rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And man, whose heav’n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, –
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

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