Gone Away Like All the Dying Stars

they all said they couldn’t have anticipated

the end of a world that was ready to burn,

tinder and paper up in flames as a warning,

but no one listened or saw or said the worst

because “positivity” was the talk of the hour.

a human’s greatest downfall will come when

he clings to hope despite all the odds, piled

up and stacked against him in ways that were

foreshadowing in a sense, a dirge long before

it could be mistaken for a ballad or a lullaby.

but when the sky flames down in sparks,

an earth whose soil has turned against itself

with water that is poisonous to taste and

a climate that speaks in heat waves and

cold spells and all manner of hell on earth—

then it’s time to say goodbye in all forms.

no one listened as the cries came tumbling,

the lessons learned come too late to matter,

as throats were left parched and dry, stomachs

hollow as pits in the strained earthen matter,

and we might have had only ourselves to blame—

but there wasn’t even time for that, not in the end.