A Crusader's Lament

Metallic waters flowed around my ankles,

Painting my skin an unforgiving crimson.

The color, it seems, of liberation.

A city, once awash with people,

Now as silent as the grave it’s become

As we listen in the quiet, for signs of life to extinguish.

Light glints from all angles as we search,

Reflected from precious keepsakes, off thousands of corpses.

A victory hard won rings hollow, the price clear.

Ichor watered the sand, beginning to desiccate as many had before.

Bloodless shells of horses littered the land, from Antioch to Jerusalem.

Their lifeblood used to water the throats of the parched, lest they die too.

For forgiveness we had marched: eager, naïve.

Surveying the city of the dead, the damned,

I fleetingly wonder, is this the face of forgiveness?

Wandering the streets of our prize, I am lost.

Once ours, it had long been lost to us.

Returned, bathed in red, unrecognizable.