{"id":378,"date":"2025-11-13T23:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/?page_id=378"},"modified":"2025-11-15T16:04:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T16:04:33","slug":"battlefield","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/poetry\/battlefield\/","title":{"rendered":"Battlefield"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evan Chen<\/span><\/p>\n

The battlefield was quiet,<\/span><\/p>\n

not with peace,<\/span><\/p>\n

but with the hush of things too broken to speak,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She lay where the grass still lived,<\/span><\/p>\n

beneath a sky cracking like an open wound,<\/span><\/p>\n

her armor split, her breath a fading thread,<\/span><\/p>\n

her hair once braided like a promise, now tangled with blood and dust<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re late,\u201d she whimpered as her soft gaze met mine,<\/span><\/p>\n

the wind pulling what was left of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

the smile that followed was stitched with pain and defiance<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The sun behind her spilled red;<\/span><\/p>\n

not golden, not warm,<\/span><\/p>\n

but the red of endings,<\/span><\/p>\n

the red of goodbye<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I wanted to hold it in place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stop the bleeding sky,<\/span><\/p>\n

Stop her from fading.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cYou were supposed to run,\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I accused her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI did,\u201d She smiled gently. \u201cJust the wrong way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I lived on after the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

only if you count living as a Yin without a Yang,<\/span><\/p>\n

as a man without a soul,<\/span><\/p>\n

as a universe without its stars,<\/span><\/p>\n

as me without her.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nEvan Chen The battlefield was quiet, not with peace, but with the hush of things too broken to speak,  …\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Battlefield”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"parent":322,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-378","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/378\/revisions\/387"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}