with fire. 
except this time, it will not birth a cosmos, neither of mountains nor stars 
only smoke, rising like a funeral veil 
over cities too loud to listen to their own eulogies. 
plastic wraps itself around the throats of oceans, the waves choke on their own salt, 
spitting out bones of coral and fish 
like secrets they can no longer keep. 
i walk through streets where trees once stood, their shadows erased, 
their voices silenced beneath asphalt 
shimmering like oil slicks in the sun. 
the heat clings to my skin, 
thick as regret, 
heavy as a mother’s goodbye. 
they keep feeding the sky poison, 
its belly swelling with ash and exhaust. it coughs rain that tastes of acid, 
spits wind that rips apart roofs 
and shreds the fragile seams of homes. 
as they build another pipeline, 
as the glaciers bleed into the sea, 
as they pave paradise into parking lots they call it progress, 
as they move closer to armageddon. 
i learned to breathe shallow, 
because the air is a stranger now, 
because every inhale feels like stealing from something already dying. 
because the rivers are shrinking, 
because the forests are thinning,
because the earth shudders and trembles like a wounded animal dragging itself toward a grave it did not dig for itself. 
how do you grieve a world that is not yet gone? 
how can we be heard over the thrum of power plants and dollar signs? how do i go on living when the future is something 
that can only be imagined in ruins? 
and when it all collapses 
the towers, the highways, the factories, the lies 
when the sky falls silent and the earth takes back what it can, will only our regrets be left to fill the void?