The walls were thick with will—

                               not strength, not steel.

 

We laid them down like pronouns in a grammar of fear,

fluent only in repetition. Stone by stone we spelled out:

Never again. And meant it.

 

But silence tunnels too.

 

A whisper breached where no guns aimed—

not headlong, but sidelong,

like memory forgetting its own edge.

 

We stood behind ideas poured in concrete,

dared the years to erode resolve.

But wars do not read manifestos.

 

They rewrite them.

 

How obstinate we were to measure threat

by angles and rivets and the reach of last century's ghosts.

As if resolve means nothing must change.

 

As if war wears the same boots twice.

 

The enemy came around not through.

And found us still posing in the mirror of our fortifications,

our certainty collapsing inward like lungs beneath mustard skies.

 

We learned nothing but how to repeat the lesson.