The air seeps into the fragile combs of my lungs like wisps of sickly smoke drifting from strangers' pursed lips, from fossil fuels slipping through dilapidated grounds, from black fumes of industrial machines wreaking havoc on Earth. I am breathing through smoke-clogged lungs, the very tissues of my body withering into black ash and burying my skeleton beneath the remnants of what's left of the world.
I once lived as the prairies did - breathing in the aroma of honey-dipped flowers, perfumes of lavender cradling my skin like morning mist across the sleepy waters, and exhaling tranquility as my heartbeat synced with the rest of the lands. I am interconnected with the veins of the trees, my blood coursing like rushing rivers as my limbs dance along to the rhythm of nature underneath the cosmic pools glittering in their euphoric iridescence above me.
I lived in peace.
But you came along. A forlorn specter with ice shards for fingers, moonstone eyes envisioning a manifestation of destinies never carved for you to take, a smile so brumal that one would wonder if your mirth was a meticulous facade. You are one who believes in attaining freedom by means of destruction.
I watched you as your pale lips parted so carefully as the smoke pervaded like skeletal hands reaching aimlessly into the empty space, and when I coughed from the poisonous smell, you laughed. Dropping your lighter onto the grass beneath us, the lands were caught in vindictive flames: the yellow-hued grasslands swallowed up by sunset fire, pale pink flowers and dandelions morphing into small embers, the homes of the animals now their early graves. You ignited a wildfire that meant for the eradication of everything that thrived here, where the lands breathed in and out so gently as if they were caught in a peaceful sleep.
And I've been suffocating on virulent air for a long time now. You constantly feed the atmosphere your lethal fumes, a venom of charcoal clouds so deadly and yet you love it. You itch for the taste of rotten air, licking your lips over and over as you can't wait to corrupt your lungs with addictive chemicals, swearing that it's comforting, relieving, an escape.
An escape from what?
I've been grasping for clean air, clean water, clean lands and all you do to reach your rapture is breathe in plumes of polluted smoke and smile at the delirium it brings. You're in love with the romanticism of self-destruction, claiming it brings you peace, all the while I am the one being utterly destroyed by your heinous actions. You've come to seek freedom but destruction follows in your footsteps, unaware that the torture you've put us all through will in time come back to you.
YOU ARE READING
The Ebb & Flow of Virtue
Poetry~ There is good and bad constantly warring with each other inside you, a small voice resounds in my conscience just as my vision dips underneath the salty water, it is similar to how the land fights with the sea, the sky with gravity, the light...
