An Empty Cost

I have always been very interested in history. I think that this is essential for a writer to reach their potential. Understanding events that have occurred help us all evolve. In saying this, this poem was inspired by a photograph of an event in history. This photo did not depict people or blood or guts or anything you would expect to create such an emotion. It was a pile of things. Lets see if you can guess my allusion...

An Empty Cost
 by Katherine Racine

In all of them, there was something sharp.
Sharp and salient just below the skin.
Skin that wrapped and clung so tightly.
So tightly it could be played as a drum.
Drums were bludgeoned too. 

Imagination could not be the canvas for this scene.
There is no paint constructed, no brushes created
That would note this tribulation, for even tribulation
 seems unfitting a word.

The only tools for description belonged to the ones who
owned the wisdom.
It lived in their heads, dwelled on their tongues,
camped in their eyes, swallowed their hearts, and ate their smiles.  
 Even their language fell before reaching our comprehension.

Pureness, religion, and opinion
lead a nation and killed another.
Neither escaped without a scar.

The piles of rings-
The mountains, skyscrapers, towers
The waves, oh the waves of rings
that were striped from fingers
who were striped of lives.  

The rings were nothing in comparison
to the fingers that were once its owners.
Tiny lines of slick silver, vivid gold, and luminous diamonds 
once circumscribed the fingers which held pivotal promise.

“Till death do us part”
“Till death do us part”
“I do”
Repeatedly this was the daunting doom.
Each circle was looming tangible affirmation of
the eradication of two entities.
One life, one love.