I.
Once he wore the green of command,
a body whole, a face unshadowed—
the light of home pressed into his skin,
the promise of return clasped in a ring.
Beside him she leaned, her eyes unbroken,
believing love could outlast the front.

II.
Now the body is a cage of ribs,
a famine written into his bones.
His eyes are vast trenches, emptied
by months of hunger and silence,
an echo of camps from Belsen to Bataan,
where men returned as shadows, not soldiers.

III.
Owen told us of dulled souls in gas
and Sassoon railed against wasted youth;
but no poem could cage this hollowing—
a man stripped into absence,
a figure more ghost than groom,
standing alive, but scarcely breathing.

IV.
This is not new:
Korean snows, Vietnamese jungles,
the Balkan cells where men dwindled,
all wars in one gaunt face—
proof that the twentieth century lingers,
its cruelties rewritten in every age.

V.
And yet—she leans still,
her hand an anchor on his arm,
her presence the one untaken thing.
In her gaze, the hollow fills with breath;
in her touch, he is not erased.
A broken man, but not beyond love.