Have you been visiting?

Do you linger above us,

silent and silver,

watching this bruised world spin?

Does Earth glint like a jewel,

or crack like old bone

beneath your gaze?

Can you see the icebergs

dissolving into the mouth of the sea?

Do you taste the air,

metallic with our greed?

Do you hear the whispers,

our governments’ conspiracies

curling like smoke?

Is there violence where you are?

Do your kind split atoms,

shatter stars?

Here, our leaders carve our futures

into coffins,

feed our children to the machines.

We worship war

and call it progress.

Do you turn back

when you see us?

Do you pity this broken species,

our hearts heavy with rust,

our hands slick with ruin?

Or do you stay,

mesmerized as one watches

a fire devour a house?

If your world is quiet,

untouched by our clamor,

will you take me with you?

I would leave this earth,

its ash-stained skies,

its brittle inheritance.

I would follow you

to a place where stars breathe freely

and the air is soft as feathers.

But perhaps you see us

for what we are…

a caution, a wound,

a poem written

in the language of extinction.

Yours,

a voice among the ruins