If you are able,
save for them a place inside of you.
Take one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer be.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Seize what they have left in their wake
and keep what they have taught you with their dying,
and hold it with your own.
Then in that time
when men decide and feel safe to call this war insane,
take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes
you left behind.
You jerk