VITALITY

VITALITY

By Anna Brown

Words launch like asteroids and howl towards the World– a blinding inferno that paints the sky like blood that never spills.

And the World holds Her breath, tilting on

Her axis like a crumbling tower and exposing a frail surface,

waiting for the familiar embrace of fire.

Because She knows asteroids.

How they crumble to dust and ash, strangling

Her, blanketing the sky with noxious clouds.

Yes, the sand seeps into canyons and trenches,

slipping through every crevice–

wriggling its way into history,

a parasite detected, yet never exterminated.

The sun winks into a memory,

flowers and trees wither and decay,

and even the roaring tiger collapses for

a deep, weary slumber in a bed

Of frigid, crystallizing grass.

Until the sun blazes again,

they never bloom nor wake.

And still, She resigns to every asteroid

Because the quiet World is familiar.

These dusty asteroids can be housed

And the Apocalyptic asteroids cannot.

The ones that explode and

Score Her surface with craters and

blast plants and felines and

consume them all with fire and floods

and fractures that can’t be repaired–

The asteroids born of speech cannot do this.

If She must choose between the two,

She will resign herself

To the familiar World of ash.