THE SPACE

A beginning

Layers and layers of dark matter have settled
after years and years of decay,
to make this great wasteland.

Few pass here now, and those that do
comment in dismay at all the absences,
at what isn’t growing here.

And it’s not for me to tell them,
that to decompose is a different type of development,
that now, I can survive solely on the rain for sustenance,
that I am more ocean than earth,
that I am dark and deep
and rich with the earth’s reclaimed relics.
That I am an unhurried habitat,
groaning with an ancient ache.

Because, as those of us who have adapted to live in this
neglected land know,
there is no peaceful present,
without first turning the sod
on our painful past.

My body is a bogland,
these buried bones, a beginning.