the world is burning
and in the middle of it, I am a girl who has never known love
clinging to traces of tenderness in this temporary home
we call Earth
holding the fleeting future of humanity in my ardent grip
standing my ground at the edge of annihilation
but longing to step off the precipice
and fall into your steady, work-worn hands and lock myself in your brown-eyed gaze and press my cheek against your relentless heart
and dream that it might beat in time with mine
but if I told you, you’d say the world is burning
and that love is for fools in a world at war and I know too well
that the only touch you’ll bestow on me
is your hand on my shoulder steering me back into battle
and the only place we’ll lie side by side
is the grindstone where we toil, facedown and silent till death.
so I turn my cheek from all thoughts of you and with aching arms I haul up bucket after bucket,
drawing fresh water from a bottomless stone well
to breathe life back into this barren soil
and fight for a land where hope might grow anew
