Earth

Do you think the earth feels pain when it's shot with dynamite to make more caves? Or do you think it's relieved, that it finds there's more space to breathe?

Do you think the earth cries out when it shakes and shatters, or do you think it's a frisson of pleasure that passes through its veins?

Because if the earth felt what I did when you found your way in to the darkest corners of my mind, then I think I know the answers.

I want you to recognize yourself in the verses I write. I want you to see your name in places where I don't carve it. I want you to notice the way I omit you from stories I make up about you, from anecdotes whose plots I change while I narrate them. I want you to feel the way I thirst for you, the way the earth does for rain, howling out - like a wolf at the moon; I want you to hear that silence. And I want you to tell me that you do.

The ground we walk on carries the echoes of piano notes. Bookstores dissolve under the weight of this love. We stand in the middle of heaven and hell - on a green and blue plate that divides them both.

You are that explosion both outside me and within me. I wonder how I can be right by your side, pretend to be so still, when there are earthquakes inside of me, and caverns opening up.

Not even my lip trembles.

Because I'm still waiting for you to tell me you hear that silence.

#fiction #streamofconsciousness #poetry #prose #love #earth #lust #prosepoem