One Work, Two Moments

July 17, 2016 7:42pm

As I lazily drag my feet across the soft earth beneath me

I feel something protruding from the ground

Careful not to disturb the life that’s grown there

Even more careful not to disturb the dead

 

As I reach down to pluck a single flower from the ground

I retrieve it to find a stem with no petals

Even in death you are sure to disappoint

After all, it’s what you do best

 

A garden created from your flesh

A new world built on the demise of your own

Flourishing bodies only possible by your deteriorating one

But you have found a way to break this too

 

There next to you are sanity, hope and desire

Words I can’t speak

Without constantly being carted back into the aftermath of your destruction

I can feel the reverberation pulsing through the ground

Now reminded of the descent of my own mind

 

As I carefully maneuver the grounds on which you lay under

I find frustration in knowing that you still won

The bomb debris adding a layer of protection

The shrapnel as your last defense

Both gladly turn back into weapons as I’m forced to realize it’s just a matter of time

 

I told myself that I would never be like you

Alas, I was partly right

January 10, 2026 11:17pm

There are places I still walk like they might remember me wrong.

Like the earth could flinch if I step too hard,

like something underneath is holding its breath.

I move slowly

Not out of reverence—

but out of habit.

The ground here is generous in the way graves are generous:

it gives back what it was fed,

just not in recognizable form.

I once bent down and took what I thought was a flower.

It came up obediently in my hand—

a clean green stem,

no color attached.

I hold it there,

unsure what to call the absence…

It’s strange, the things that grow when something rots long enough.

Whole ecosystems made from what someone couldn’t keep alive.

A future fertilized by collapse.

A soft lie the earth tells to make decay feel productive.

I used to think destruction was loud.

Explosions.

Cratered moments.

Obvious damage.

But it turns out most ruin is quiet.

It settles.

It embeds.

It learns how to pass as foundation.

There are words buried near you—

sanity, hope, want—

and every time I reach for them

the ground hums back with impact.

A low vibration that rearranges my thoughts

before I can finish a sentence.

I know better now than to dig straight down.

I walk the perimeter instead,

studying the debris field like it’s a map.

Fragments everywhere,

each one sharp enough to remind me

that time doesn’t disarm anything—

it just teaches it patience.

You are gone.

You are not powerless.

You are still winning in small ways.

In the pauses before I answer.

In the way my body braces before joy.

In how I check the exits of rooms that have never harmed me.

I promised myself I would never become you.

I was careful with the wording.

I didn’t become you.

I didn’t inherit your hands.

I inherited the terrain.

I learned your physics.

I learned how damage travels.

I learned how something can be over

and still determine the shape of everything that follows.

And sometimes—

when I’m tired,

when the ground feels too familiar under my feet—

I swear I feel something stirring below.

Not alive.

Not dead.

Just waiting

for me to decide

what grows next.