Cracks in an Hourglass

imagine this:
us, walking barefoot through the wreckage of melted roads
the sun carving epitaphs into a sky too scorched for rain.

no gloss can immortalize this –  
our fingerprints / burned into bullet casings
into protest signs / into the silence between sirens.

tonight, the sky split like an old wound reopening
and the stars fell, one by one
into oceans we smothered with our hunger.

here lies the residue of tides that once held our reflections –  
now they turn their backs / salt-heavy, ashamed.

it was for the vultures and the war machines
for the way i counted falling forests
and you tallied forgotten graves
for the silence we swallowed like a meal left unfinished.

it must have been written by a prophet or a specter
it haunts so completely –  
maybe it is a ghost wearing future’s face.

if we were moths threading holes through time
would we take flight?
or would we stitch ourselves into the edges
and let the embers write our fate?

will they remember / the smoke curling from the last forests
the refugee boats swallowed by the tide
the ruins crumbling from shelled cities
the way the clock struck one and kept striking – 

how it all cracked,
and how we let it.