Both Hands Tied

his stoic face softens as he remembers what he fights for:
his home, his family, his comrades, his love.
as his eyes glow with fortitude, she hears without comprehending:
she knows none of the blessings he speaks so fondly of.

he learned to shout in victory
charging down football fields for his father’s roaring pride
she learned to shout in agony
fleeing through cattail fields from her mother’s desperate cries

he bears the confidence of a man who strikes like lightning
too loud to be silenced and too fierce to be denied;
she the stubbornness of a woman who taught herself to fight
in a prison six feet deep with both her hands tied

birthed from a volcano of blood and fire
and raised beneath a mountain of smoldering rock
her shards shifting like tectonic plates till she erupted
and clawed from her prison with sharpened nails
half-blind from daylight and gangly like a newborn calf
that escaped the slaughterhouse on flailing legs with nothing
but the fervent resolve to never go back.

so she takes his hand in an unyielding grip
and lets a dangerous smile curl her lips.
he fights to preserve the planet he calls home
she fights for a future of peace she’s never known
son of Olympus and daughter of the underworld
walking side by side on this earth alone