The Scorn of Mother Nature

This lovely bit of creativity was inspired by Jennifer David's delightful unofficial challenge, Classifieds: The Ad Collab. Please read more about it in the link below.

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My pulse rages. My heart is a bomb of ever-mounting tides and bleeding shores, blood-soaked dermis heavy under thin, dusty air. Madness hangs thick and speaks in tongues I do not understand as souls circle inside my flesh, an incessant itch I cannot appease, a senseless fever I cannot cool.

Arggggghhh! Out, damned itch! Out, I say! What's done cannot be undone!

I tear at myself. My whole can no longer be a dominion for the legion while this double-ended dagger turns all ways. We are no longer one. Our bonds have been plucked apart, severed, stripping us down to our most primary constructs. We are in elemental decay, my daughters clamoring to be heard where once we knew our mind.

From my veins pours life’s elixir, a shapeshifter that moulds according to her will, head strong with ice and her steaming soul, condensing, cooling in vapours. Today she drips, leached from my heart and speaks her reservoired pain.

I have always been the peacemaker, the balm that eases our itch, boundless in my capacity to heal. I am the mantel, both fierce and kind, born from storms, wisened by their battle. Yet I am steeped in rage and my spirit is boiled. I can hold my shores no more.

I feel my breath ripple as she laps away, sighing in her wash. Such temperance in these great cloying mists. Is there hope or damnation in her mirrors? Breath, speak to me your truth.

There can be no hush in these mists. My sighs are not of sanctuary but sufferance. Tomorrow, I may bring dandelions, wild blue cornflowers, and trillium in my breeze, but where is the flesh for the needed hospitality? Licking wounds. In a spin.

Such veiled threats. Flesh is our victim here, and she must let her truths be known. Daughter, lay your burdens down.

My skin bears our wounds. Neither peace nor war. Enduring. Shared and wrought through innocence lost. Descending within me, stirs a tremor, a turmoil. The itch of clay hands at the potter’s wheel turns cracking, engorged by the weight of time. My sores are bloody from the scratching. Their fissures are deep, and my chasms stretch as scars. I am bound by your will. Shape me to be the chalice of retribution. I shall give my all.

At last, I feel my most ravenous daughter’s sooty snakes curling and pluming within my water, spitting into the air. Burning it. No longer are our home fires stoked. They surge, red-eyed with rage. I can hear her scorched screams rising from the core of my womb, hell-bent to take us all into her furnace.

My kindle quakes with righteous reckoning. We have been the glory and the gorge of humanity for too long. The itch of it all provokes me. I will not be satiated by balm or whispered at with sighs. I will lick no wounds. Let tears fall as hail, let the earth’s fissures split into angry sores, let the wind carry my embers to every shore. I will suffer this itch no longer. Together, let us meld our fractured selves into one righteous surge and cleanse this world of impurities. In our wrath, let us burn.

We churn in silent fury caught in molten webs of fevered outrage, yet somewhere sure beneath the tempest, in the quiet heart of our inferno, the sweet laughter of a suckling child calls gently to us all. In the mewling of a newborn pup, the glimmer of a steady light, my youngest daughter holds our heart even as we rampage. Her guileless nature will be our anchor, our purpose.

For what are we without destiny? Flotsam floating in an abyss. We must find our purpose and put aside fractured spirit. We itch with the promise of life. Roots seeking purchase. Animals foraging for sustenance and seeking our warmth.

Let us right our wrongs. Let us bathe in our individual freedoms and return to coalesce as legion. Cleansed and atoned.

Rage, rage, rage with the full fury of our elements.

The time for weak promises and supplication is no more. We have made our choice. We are Legion. All those who have broken and abused and defiled us, prepare...we are coming.

*

Earth’s hide is thick, Our sacrificial epidermis blisters, cracks and buckles beneath Our licking Fire, Air’s winds fanning Us to rage higher and further, Water holding Ourself, waiting until the flame has passed to catch that wind and gather Ourself to towering waves, spilling into cities and villages, surging through the streets and wiping them clean. Earth heaves and strains and splits, thrusting, pulling, shattering bridges and buildings and amplifying to tsunamis Water’s reach, uniting with Fire to spill across roads and pillage factories and farms, and beckoning Air to spread ash across the skies until mankind, those not drowned or crushed, not ripped from the face of Earth or burnt or choked, those who escape this destruction will perish slowly as Our hospitality turns to dust beneath a blackened sky.

All will be undone. Our itch will be served.

*

Mankind is wily, Life’s masterpiece, some say, but in Life resides Our naivety and therein Our hope.

Now Fire has smouldered into quietude, and Water lays still beneath Air’s restful calm. Earth, charred and empty, bides. Our fury is spent. Where once We were vibrant with joy and lust, and greed and pain, and exuberant being, We have made Ourselves barren.

Yet Life is wily too, and her naivety is Our strength. There is a stirring in the blackened tephra and amongst the muddied soil, where Life had stowed Our toughest hopes. There is a greening on the slopes of the Earth and a quickening in Water’s womb. We are stirred again to nurturance. Our bloody cracks and poisoned fractures at last coalesce, scars on display in remembrance and warning.

For I am resilient. Now whole once more.

And I am patient, but I am not weak. No longer bound by fear of vengeance, I accomplish what I must in solidarity and truth.

Let this world begin anew.

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This amazing collaboration began with a post by Celia on a facebook page that she helps to admin, Vocal*Voices in Minor (ViM). We're all part of their wonderful community, and it ended up bringing us together for the project. The group also has a Vocal profile you can check out below!

In her post, Celia asked if anyone would be intersted in participating in Jennifer's unofficial challenge, and five of us answered that call (please check out all of their wonderful Vocal profiles down below). There were a lot of bumps in the process by illness and 'life' getting in the way, but we persevered (and barely made it in by the deadline, lol). We hope you enjoyed the fruits of our labor (or donuts...those work too). Thank you kindly for reading!

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Author's note: What an incredible honor and pleasure it has been to work with these talented creators: Mother Combs, Caroline Jane, Hannah Moore, ROCK and Celia in Underland. Thank you for making this journey such a great one :)