I saw heaven in the habitat before me.
In stillness I surveyed scenery.
Soundly, you slept.
Uneasy, I explored with soft eyes.
Studies enlightened me.
You sensed it; tectonic plates shifted.
My fingertips crept up mountains and into valleys.
They wove through paper white birch stubble;
a ghost forest, echoing lacerating verbiage.
My lips scraped across your crater rim;
a volcanic shaft that spewed pestilent proclamations.
Blinded by vog, I stumbled in dizzying dissonance
over furrows of fury,
scars of shamelessness,
wrinkles of regret.
Ages had sculpted your barren, sand-scorched scalp;
sediment filling follicles,
suffocating roots,
new shafts no longer springing.
Twisted thickets accentuated seductive cenote pools.
Surrendering, I slipped bare into their openings,
swiftly seared by stares of scorching blue.
Vapor that once warmed my body
now encased me with hoar frost;
freezing needles impaled me,
immobilized me.
Deep canals that once heard my pleas
became impenetrable with pernicious brambles.
Earth’s crust cracked,
slipping from lava-blistered flesh
rubbed raw from a forced façade.
The surface rupture ripped wider,
flinging me,
freeing me
from a biosphere where I never belonged.
Tracy Ahrens lives just south of Chicago, Illinois and has been a journalist/writer for over 30 years. She has published 10 books, including two non-fiction works, five children’s books and three books of poetry. As of 2026 she had earned over 130 writing awards. See her website at www.tracyahrens.weebly.com.
