Once and Future

We painted dawn into midnight  
Out of cement ceilings  
we made skylights  
From gravel, we crafted fine and delicate chandeliers  
hung them with fishing line  
so they appeared to float in midair  
We turned copper piping into rings  
Venus circling our fingers  
the oxidation turned our digits green  
our limbs transforming  
into ferns and orchids  
We breathed and our condensation  
Created clouds  
Our tears fed the sea  
We prayed to all the living things 
We sat in silence with the trees  
Our feet rooting into the ground  
To touch the highest energy  
The evergreens and us  
We breathed in tandem  
And inside our lungs  
Sprung a forest of veins  
Mimicking their cousins’ limbs  
We sprouted two intricate flowers  
In our minds 
For the left and right hemispheres  
And we hung our thoughts there  
Believing that the petals would keep them safely tucked away  
We recognized ourselves 
Didn’t need mirrors to see our likeness  
Even the dirt felt like us  
The sand, our bones in a trillion pieces 
We walked atop these beaches
Sinking in, their legacy holding us 
There was silence  
and we were not afraid  
There was peace  
And we were not anxious 
There was a world  
We did not conquer

Copyright © 2024 by Desdamona. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 8, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“I began writing ‘Once and Future’ in 2015, thinking about what comes from the ashes when something is destroyed. If the world as we know it was obliterated but we survived, what would we do? What would we rebuild? What would we leave behind? There would be a new chance to do something differently than we have done in the past, and this poem was the beginning of my ideas around what that could look like.”
—Desdamona