We walked away when fire slept,
When the last scream lost its sound,
Left the names in broken stone
And the bodies in the ground.
They said, “Live on, the war is done,”
But nights still know their face—
The dead don’t stay where they were laid,
They walk in those who stayed.
Survivors carry the dead inside,
Like embers under skin,
Every breath a borrowed one,
Every dawn a quiet sin.
We stand because they fell away,
We speak with borrowed breath—
The living move, but never light,
For we are homes for death.
Their hands still guide our trembling ones,
Their fear still pulls the thread,
In every choice we didn’t make
Lives someone else’s end.
The world calls us the lucky few,
The spared, the blessed, the saved—
But blessing weighs like graveyard earth
On souls that learned to brave.
We don’t hear ghosts in whispered halls,
Or see them in the flame—
They rise when silence asks us who
Still answers to their name.
Survivors carry the dead inside,
Not chains, but beating hearts,
Each step we take is crowded ground,
Each life a thousand parts.
We don’t outlive them—we go on
With every loss still near,
For those who lived when others died
Are never walking clear.
