Making Peace —— The Cost Of Ceasefire Poem by Xijuan Bellotti

Thirty days of fragile hope, thirty nights of whispered prayers.

Will it hold? We do not know, the voices sigh, but in the silence

Between the shells, we hear the echoes of desire, 

the whispers of peace. Three shadows collide—
'
frost, storm, and gold'—Each a reflection of power; 

Each a mirror of humanity's flaws.

Peace is not a deal, 
but a fragile crystal, forged in pauses between breaths, 
in the restructuring of sentences.Love is
the reckoning—
A surrender to the collective

A refusal to let desire

become a refuge from responsibility.


Peace is not the absence of war, 

but the presence of a world remade—

A world where love is not a refuge, 
but a reckoning.