It’s the right of each soul to speak and be heard,

To gather in peace or to challenge a word,

To question, to wonder, to carve a new way,

Or cling to the echoes that beg us to stay.

It’s the right of each mind to open or close,

To reach for the truth or settle for prose,

To build upon bridges or tear them apart,

To lead with our fear or lead with our heart.

They told you that war was the price to be free,

That power must bow or be forced to its knees,

That peace is a dream men are too blind to chase,

That force is the law that will keep us in place.

They told you that evil must fall to the blade,

That blood must be spilled for the world to be saved,

That children not born yet depend on this fight,

That we must take lives to protect their first light.

But what is this future that’s bought with the dead?

A world stained in sorrow, in blood that was shed.

What father can promise a peace built on graves?

What mother finds comfort in war-making waves?

A house may be taken by hands that are strong,

But to burn down their village makes us just as wrong.

For the world is a mirror, a thread we all weave,

And the war that we start is the war we receive.

Disgrace is not choosing to set down the blade.

Disgrace is believing that war must be made.

Disgrace is pretending no other way stands,

That peace isn’t forged by our hearts and our hands.

They said there’s no choice, that war must be done.

But tell me, what battle has ever been won?

If war has a victor, then show me his face.

For one mother weeps while another’s embrace

Holds a man who came home, but something is gone.

He traded his soul just to live and move on.

His wife lays beside him, yet sleeps all alone,

For his heart has been severed, his mind not his own.

The wounds that he carries will pass to his kin,

And yet he believes that this war let them win.

But I never asked for the price that you paid.

I never asked for the life that you gave.

Don’t tell me to thank you. Don’t ask for my praise.

Don’t tell me this war bought us all brighter days.

I never asked for a martyr.

I asked for a dad.

I asked for a father.

I asked for a man.

Not a ghost in a home where no warmth can remain,

Not a name on a stone washed in tears and in rain,

Not a hollowed-out heart where a war still resides,

Not a stranger who looks through me, empty inside.

You left us to kill because you were afraid,

Afraid to say no, afraid to be brave.

Lay down the echoes. Let silence begin.

Let something start growing where war had once been.

A world where we walk without ghosts at our side,

Where fear does not burn every bridge in our stride.

So welcome home—not from war, but from fear,

Not with a rifle, but with hands drawing near,

Not with a banner of conquest and pain,

But a vow—let no more wars be fought in our name.