Void

The tear opens with the passive violence of a fault line. At opposite scales, the fault is apparent: the wound itself a mass. The skin, the earth, buckles and tears, obduction and subduction acting in perfect, violent union. This island chain, this aching, abyssal trench; this fear rising, this anger descending. 

How strange that, sunk, it will reunite with the churning mass; united in their homogeneity, their lineage dissolving in the convection and chaos. It will sink further then, one day, finally take its place again in the sun and air… the subduction-obduction-absolution pathway. But ever the churn and whirl below: there can be no satiety for the earth. To stop is to die; to consume is to play your hand at eternity.

And what is the soundtrack to the carnival? This one geological event that occurs on an all-too-human timescale? Under the deep rumbling of stone against stone: screams and whispers of rage and discontent. This inconvenience, this horror, from our one sanctuary in the inhospitable expanse.

So, too, my mind obducts and subducts and so, too, I rumble with rage and discontent. How can this sanctuary of flesh and blood and electricity act such betrayal upon me? The wound itself a mass, collapsing under the weight of betrayal and conceit; their natures lost, united in homogeneity.

I scream into the void: the darkness echoes with silence.

(Inspired by Rupi Kaur's Healing Through Words (2022, Simon & Schuster))