The Thirsty Earth 

We live below the earth now.

Not buried, not yet,

but pressed into his ribs

like damp breath in a coffin.

 

Mud is our inheritance.

It grips the ankles,

sucks at the knees,

chews the leather 

from our boots

and the warmth 

from our bones.

 

We smell of iron 

and rot 

and men

who have forgotten 

what clean meant.

 

Rats dine better than we do.

They grow sleek

on the uncomplaining dead.

Bold as sergeants,

they step across a man’s cheek

as if inspecting him for promotion.

 

Dawn is the worst betrayal.

It rises pink and innocent

over wire that claws at the sky,

over craters fat with rainwater

and faces looking upward

as if heaven had given them

a private answer.

 

Shells arrive without introduction 

a cough in the distance,

then the sky splitting like wet timber.

Earth erupts.

Air becomes teeth.

We are flung against the walls

of our own small graves.

 

Somewhere a boy calls for his mother

in a voice already thinning.

Someone laughs 

not because it is funny,

but because the mind

has slipped its harness.

 

Gas creeps low and patient.

A yellow fog fingering the duckboards,

curious as a cat.

 

Masks fumbled on 

with shaking hands 

too late for one.

 

He drowns standing up,

eyes bulging with a question

no officer can answer.

 

We were told of glory.

Of flags snapping clean 

in righteous wind.

Of honour bright as polished brass.

But honour here is 

a lice-bitten blanket

shared between 

shivering shoulders.

Glory is a mouthful of mud

when the barrage lifts

and the whistle screams us upward.

 

Over we go.

Into the torn field

where the wire waits like scripture

and machine guns stitch the air

with neat, final sentences.

 

Men fall in fragments.

A hand still gripping nothing.

A helmet rolling free of its thoughts.

The ground drinks deeply

and asks for more.

 

By night we count ourselves

like mislaid coins.

Too few. 

Always too few.

We write letters home

with fingers 

that will not stop trembling,

lying gently

about sunsets and strong spirits.

 

Sleep comes in shreds.

Dreams are loud with shrapnel.

We wake clawing at the dark,

certain the bombardment 

has begun again,

though it is only memory

doing its work.

 

And yet 

in the brief hush between guns 

someone shares a cigarette.

Someone hums 

a half-remembered song.

A photograph is passed along,

creased and reverent,

proof that somewhere

the world still grows flowers

instead of graves.

 

We endure.

Not because we believe the speeches,

nor because 

we hunger for medals,

but because the man beside us

is still breathing

and we will not leave him alone

in this churned and faithless earth.

 

So we remain 

mud-streaked, 

hollow-eyed,

listening for the next thunder.

 

Young men 

made ancient

in a ditch

that history 

will one day 

call

a 

line.

 

By Jonah Libertine Gill

©️Libertine13

08/05/2026