Scorched Earth

Recall
in the dawn

before memory,

we walked upright
with the arrogance

of creatures newly given fire,
our intentions shining like obsidian

 spears lifted toward a sky that did

not yet know our names. Logic was once

our North Star, a single unwavering point in

the dark, but its glow dimmed as we marched
into the seductive wilderness of our own ambitions.
Goodness cracked under the pressure of wanting, and from

 those fractures leaked the slow poison of compromised principles.

Thus, the first ember of a fire that would someday devour entire horizons.

Greed drifted in quietly, a shimmering mist over the battlefield of the mind,
granting us illusions of dominion as it hollowed out the marrow of our ethics.
Love, ancient and solemn, was seized as the first hostage, reforged into weapons
capable of leveling cities of trust and naivete with a single vow spoken falsely.
Under a bruised and trembling sky, we hurled these newly forged devastations at those we once swore to protect, and each impact radiated outward like the birth
  of a dark star. The world convulsed, and our humanity split open like a fault line.

Soon, the land beneath us resembled a prophecy fulfilled, a continent of cinders
etched with the geometry of our failures. Reality buckled; time warped; the air
shimmered with the heat of consequences rushing to claim their due.  Shadows elongated into monstrous forms that wore our own silhouettes, and panic rose like a tide of black glass, slicing, brightly breaking us open from the inside. We fell, not with horrific screams, but with the silent dignity of dying constellations, their final light arcing in on itself like a populous of superiority ashamed to witness the ruin.

Yet even in this apocalyptic descent, most who collapse discover the truth: we are
far less fragile than the world we choose to destroy. No bone unfixable,  no wound void of healing, if we use honesty over hunger, compassionate love over conquest.
Only through rising, raw, humbled, and authentic, can we evade becoming another ancient, corroding relic buried deep in the abyss of a scorched earth we authored.

 Through this charred wasteland of hate, the ants march. Unconquerable. Eternal. Creatures of an old wisdom older than gods,older than every myth we fashioned to excuse our failures. They cross ruined soil with the calm certainty of beings who  fortunately have never forgotten their place in the story. No fear. No hesitation. Just the ancient trust that the world repairs itself we never abandons purpose. Primitive, but incorruptible,they rebuild while we bear witness, tiny titans proving that honesty, instinct, and endurance outlive every civilization that learns too late how easily principles are forgotten or ignorred, thrown irresponsibly to the flames.