I was here before your first breath — before your hands carved mountains into monuments. I was the pulse beneath your feet, the quiet hum in your lungs, but you only listened when I screamed.
I cracked my skies open, poured oceans from my eyes, and still, you called it weather. As if I had no heart — no bones to break, no skin to scar.
You build and burn and bury, forgetting that I breathe too. That I bleed with every tree split open at the roots. That my rivers run red with the rust of your machines.
And when I am gone, you will not miss me. You will miss the shade I gave you in summer, the warmth I held when the nights were long.
But I am not endless. I am not invincible. And I am tired of holding my breath so you can keep taking yours.
You wear my bones as crowns and call it progress. You rip the veins from my earth, draining them dry to fill your pockets. I bend, I break, I blister, but I do not bow. I will not be silent as you unravel the very fabric of my being.
There was a time when I gave you everything — fruit from my branches, water from my wells. I cradled you in valleys of green, wrapped you in skies so blue they ached. And you? You built walls to keep me out. Paved over the memories of what we once were.
But I am not a ghost to be forgotten. I am breath and beast and fury. I am the storm that swallows your cities whole, the roots that crack your pavements, the fire that turns your monuments to ash. I am the reckoning you wrote with your own hands.
Yet even now, I would forgive you. I would soften the winds, still the tides, let my forests breathe again. But forgiveness is not a gift I can give twice. My heart is tired. My rivers are tired. I am tired.
If you do not change, I will.
And when I rise, it will not be with a whisper.
It will be with a roar.