I cannot remember exactly, for —
It has been an age.
But, once,
Before I became what I have become known to be,
I know —
Just as I know my bones are waning beyond return,
I was once a place of tranquil beauty and wonder.
Cradled in the roots of otters and kings,
Of the ancient ones,
Of giants.
Groves of man long before man ever existed,
Stilted in a seemingly endless labyrinth of solstice crimson and velvet dark.
A cathedral of sun-bleached spires spread out across my expanse,
Piercing my sable silks,
As they sip away at the morning mists.
But —
As everything beautiful does,
Defenseless against the destructive nature of being human,
I have been reduced to a grisly pit —
A wastelandic graveyard for gangsters.
People came,
People kept coming,
Bringing even more —
People.
They come with machines,
To take.
They come with shovels,
To leave.
Delivering matter I am forced to ingest,
To swallow,
To be anchored in my wake.
People —
Are more often than not,
The matter in hand.
Hands —
So many hands.
My hands —
Made to hold onto more than one should ever be expected to grasp:
Some in pieces —
Some rigid and whole —
Some cemented in black barrel tombs —
Some weighted down with stone.
All —
Haunting my depths.
Their metal tools bite,
Their machines rip,
So many pieces of myself —
Gone.
Backfilled with stolen breaths, evicted souls, and affixed murky orbs,
Never to shine again.
Left behind like trash in my ill perceived filth.
The filth —
Is that of the butchers,
Desecrating my ancestral majesty.
Why must I be the one to hide their indiscretions?
An unwilling accomplice.
Criminalized as their guilty convictions are shoveled down my throat,
Choking on cadavers and objects of offense.
I possess not even a modicum of care,
For man’s affairs,
While man holds in remissness of me.
Intelligent sentient lifeforms,
They call themselves.
Hiding their life sentences in a place of preservation —
My anaerobic indifference.