to all our warriors

You come home and you say hello to your husband, your wife, or your daughter, or son, or just a phone call, and someone undoubtedly asks "how was your day?" "How was YOUR day?" Four simple words forming a simple question and yet the answer as it trips from the tips of your lips, is simply not, that simple. Because in order for it to be simple, you need to have a simple day. A day which doesn't begin without sun and end without stars. A day unfilled with heartache and sorrow and scars. But your days, your days are the essence of hard with blistering feet, marching yard after yard, through the trenches and the ditches, the blood and the gore; you soldier on for you must, because this is your war. Your war though perhaps without honor or glory is a war necessary and a burden to be born. See your war may be filled with charts and health plans. With MRIs blood pressures, temps and CAT scans and bedpans too. Yes, it's true. Off worse for wear but that is why in front of caregiver is care. Nurses like Doris, like Katie and Anna, and Claire. You're at war. On the front of the lines tall you stand. Fly your banner for a nurse is simply a soldier with unbending bedside manner. You are our soldiers against disease, against pain, against hopelessness, vanity; leaving it stained, in plain view on dual eyes, sober, buried in grief as life clings and then slips. No relief the last leaf of the fall falling down to the ground, then no more and the winter reminds you, that you're still at war. Soldier on toe to toe face the day with open minds and closed fists. We are your sisters, your brothers at arms. We are sick. We are sick but we'll battle right up to death's door. If you'll be our soldiers, come to our side into the fore. Against despair, let us roar. Shake with rattling cries. Valor rages inside you filled with purpose and pride. You are healers. You are champions. You're our maps and our guidse. So stand up and be proud as united we rise, because we are not just people on a rock spinning in space. We are one people. We are together one human race, held together by the stitches of your caring embrace and made whole by your heart and the warmth of your grace. Soldier on, because we need you, like never before because you are our soldiers and our fight is your war.