Can you imagine taking someone’s life

fostered from the minerals of this earth

birthed through canals of red hot flesh

held against milk-warm breasts

Imagine the generations of women and

men still alive in the thickness of their blood

See the women tightening their corsets against

the morning light; watch the men drive scythes

across summer’s grasses; see hands slit the tender 

throats of sheep and goats, feel the iron trickle. Meet 

those who always had the last word; meet those who

had the best stories, those who tried and never fit in.

See the priests breaking bread and full mouths rudely laughing,

See the children playing hide and seek behind cotton sheets 

in gardens; see many famines, see wars. See two perfect ten 

thousand year old sets of footprints in the sand on a lakeshore, 

fossilized — see more hands, calloused, holding torches 

and painting the rock face coming eerily alive at night.

Imagine taking the life of someone in whose veins still 

linger the lips humming lullabies in languages long lost and 

the hands crafting beds from soft furs and hands 

tying shut pouches of dried mushrooms and bringing 

fire to life — see life’s spark mutating and morphing 

through long, long rivers of genes, see genes evolving —

See ribs cages — not ours — heaving with the moist heat

of life; see soft egg shells cracking; see gills filtering

and underwater roots taking a hold of mire and rot; see

fungi and algae collide, see symbiosis emerge; see us

inventing the very first eyes, see the insane layer cake of 

quadrillions of consciousnesses possibly exploding 

from a meteor hitting this planet — see this absurdly

beautiful sci fi planet

Can you imagine taking this very life 

of some other one 

— willingly —

When they have come from so 

far

away

and have only a few glimpses 

to live,  

to be now—