HARDENED LOVE
Fact: The US has lost at least 29.7 million acres of land to forest fires in the last 20 years. If the Earth could speak to us in a language we understand, what would it say? Would it applaud our deeds or curse us for being such reckless hosts?
I know you not anymore
You once were my child
I fed you and you built your home
Out of my bane
But you scarred me
Left me withering under a spider’s web
My spirit a flickering image of my past self
You turned blind
Can’t see the ocean rising with my tears
Can’t see the scars you create
When you kill what I bear
You turned greedy
Wanting more and more every single time
So you set me on fire
And replace with glass and concrete and stone
I know you not anymore
A child forgets their roots
So forgive dear love
When my tears well up and drown
Your houses and hospitals and roads
Forgive me sweet child
When I fail to yield your seeds
When I can’t control the heat
That merely scalps you
It’s not a magical feeling
When you turn me into a dump bin
Cut and burn my trees
Poach my living biodiversity drain my wetlands to specks
Now I have to fight back
With love dipped oscillations.
E.L.N
Esther Lucy Nalubega
