Hey! Just a heads-up-this story might feel a little rushed and has its fair share of plot holes. It's my first time writing something with script-style dialogue and pacing, so I'm still figuring things out. Thanks for giving it a chance!
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Memoir of Earth I: The Sidewalk Years
I remember when I could feel the soft crush of grass beneath the feet of wanderers. When the wind didn't have to dodge buildings, and the rain could sink into my skin without being turned away by tar and tile.
But now I walk.
I walk—not as the vast blue planet you once knew—but as Earth I: a sliver of myself, exiled to the sidewalk.
Endless concrete stretches before me, cracked and hot, unyielding. A grey river where no roots reach, where even the worms have retreated. My feet no longer leave footprints—only echoes.
I try to remember the rhythm of birdsong, the chorus of frogs after rain. But the traffic hums louder. The only things that grow here push through fractures in the pavement—defiant, tired, forgotten.
Do you remember me?
I was the dirt under your fingernails, the pollen in your hair. I was the shade you napped beneath, the soil that fed your ancestors. Now I am a ghost wearing sneakers, watching my body be buried one parking lot at a time.
Still, I walk.
Not out of hope, but memory. A memory that maybe, somewhere, a child will stoop to touch a dandelion in a crack, and feel—just briefly—that the sidewalk is not the end of the story.
Memoir of Earth II: Where the Shade Once Lived
There are no trees here.
Not one to lean against. Not one to whisper when the wind passes through. Only sky, bare and blistering, stretched like a wound that never heals.
Once, I wore forests like jewelry—jade crowns of leaves, bracelets of branches and bark. Shade was my gift to you: soft, forgiving, dappled. A silence that cooled the bones and softened thoughts.
Now, you fight the shade.
You tear it down for clearer views, wider roads, flatter lots. I've seen you curse the tree whose limbs stretched too far across your driveway. I've seen you cut it down—limb by limb—because its leaves fell where your car slept.
You build steel boxes to hide from the sun and then rage when the sun makes them hot.
And when you park, you choose the sunlit space, even when the last tree stands nearby, quietly offering what's left of its cool arms. You avoid it, as if to park beneath shade is to admit you need something you've destroyed.
There are no trees here, only stories of them. They exist now in textbooks, logos, and filters—green pixels on digital fields.
But I remember.
I remember the hum of bees in spring. The way bark feels when it's wet with morning. The hush beneath a summer canopy. The way children laughed louder when they played in dappled light.
And so I grieve.
Not for myself—I am Earth. I endure. But for you. You who once sat beneath trees and dreamed. Now you only run from the sun, and call it progress.
