She walked the dirt-trodden road alone,

Who else would follow where she wandered now?

Her heart was laden, heavy as the cargo

About her waist.

Grief, despair, sorrow, bitterness, love-lost contempt.

Rage!

A childhood in a broken home,

Ten years behind her,

Now little more than rubble,

A haze-filled memory;

Footnote to a page in history.

Fallujah.

A bomber passed above her, history marched on,

And she, but a pebble to its tide, moved with it.

Her mind in shackles, she bore the key

About her waist.

Pain, fury, mourning, emptiness to passion-fuelled vitriol.

Revenge!

For a father shot at his door,

Sister - beaten - murdered;

As she lay hidden,

In a broken home.

She cried as she reached the checkpoint,

Where the soldiers turned their guns towards her.

But she shed no tears for a family lost.

Her adoptive parents - hatred and fear,

And she, their child, cried -

"Allahu akbar!"

She pulled the cord

About her waist,

As though it were a light-switch.

She switched off her light with semtex,

And her memory

Of a broken home

In Fallujah.