I am Mother Nature, Lady Earth,
and with the selflessness ingrained
into the being of those destined to mother,
I have sacrificed my flesh to all that is,
to all who claim ties to my existence.
Whether my children were fathered by God
and their existence conceived by his “Creation,”
or it was Father Time who sowed his seed
with his experimentation in evolution,
the unknown father figure is absent,
leaving my bastard children to bicker
about who donated the other half of their genes
but there is no paternity test to aid me.
Being the single mother of the world is exhausting,
stripping me bare of my precious resources,
and as my children have their own children who have theirs,
my desperation grows as big as this family does,
because hungry mouths and needy hands grab out,
tearing at my body to sustain themselves,
my body that grows more barren as they take
what very little I have left to give them.
In the battle between nature and nurture
I’m baffled at how blind they all are
to the idea that I have nurtured them with my nature,
they forget the blood ties that run in rivers
flowing with the water that courses through us all,
and in their ignorance the waters become poisoned,
oil blooms and toxic chemicals leaving fish to float belly up.
They used to say I love you back to me
when I blanketed them with the night sky,
kissing them goodnight with the twinkling of stars,
my fresh breath the breeze that rustled their hair
and cooled away nightmares of the apocalypse.
But now the thunder sound of my heart breaking
falls on deaf ears of children who think
that they know better than their mother,
and so my teachings of love and forgiveness,
of conservation and protecting each other,
are forgotten and ignored.
I’m left to stare with an open mouth,
shocked into silence at the youthful rebellion,
sinking into the sadness of this secret suicide,
knowing that the end I used to carry away
on the comforting breeze of my breathing,
is quickly approaching.
One of the saddest tragedies known to man
is for a parent to witness the death of a child,
yet I can’t tear my gaze away from the chaos
of my children killing themselves by killing me.
-Tyler Sky
