I Know How the World Ends

It starts with silence, billowing smoke

and metal rattling against impenetrable concrete.

Eradicated.

My mother, she aches. She falls into sleep.

A thousand years to make up for lost time.

Moisture trickles into fractures between brick,

weathering mortar, loosening the rigid remnants

of her abusers.

Breezes reawaken to bring messages,

teaching new life old traditions.

It comforts the anxieties of adolescent shoots.

Raging flames, returning to cleanse.

It burns away old scars, cruel memories,

undisturbed by its exploitation a thousand years before.

My mother, rebirthed by the hands of her makers.

The hand that struck her should be jealous,

to see the hum of life that has returned to her soil.

I know how the world ends;

it simply doesn’t.