We punch clocks with trembling hands.
Buy milk. Forget names.
Sleep beside lovers who speak in foreign dreams.
We do not wear camouflage,
but our griefs are patterned,
uniform in their quiet devastations.

There is no battlefield,
only the breakroom.
Only the kitchen floor,
where a child’s spilled cereal
becomes the landmine of the day.

You ask what war.
I say: this one,
the war of waking.
Of pretending.
Of enduring the news,
the mirror,
the inbox full of ghosts.

We are the soldiers of sighs,
the medics of our own bleeding.
We walk around with shrapnel in our smiles.
And no one gives us a medal
for surviving a Monday.

Tanisha (she/her) is a 14 year old poet from India exploring the intricacies of human interaction and society. Her works includes themes like revolution, society, emotions, society, loss etc and have been previously published in The Brussels Review, Blue Marble Magazine, Macrame Literary Journal and many more. When not writing she can be found sketching, reading or baking.