Left Behind: Ten Signs of Erasure
Words & Photographs by Kristina Moriconi
Originally published in Paperbark Magazine
Circle back, exhale,
locate space in which to pause—
here, the truth mingles
with grief—
a compilation of words no one wants to hear:
fissures borehole-drilled
into rock—horizontal—
vertical—
split-seams pried wide-open on once solid ground.
Skies blackened by smoke, bodies holding onto
what is taken in—
lungs like sieves.
Still, though,
we look away from what looms,
pay no heed to what cautions—
there are 122 ways to say harm,
yet silence
befalls, and we hush first the most knowing.
Wait again for the winter season—
how it comes later each year,
diminished, and we stand by, watch
as glaciers
recede,
water flooding one place,
forsaking another—
flames
alight, consuming acres— still, no one wants to say fragile.
We are all witness to edges dwindling,
to centers not holding,
to ash rain and seas
choked
by plastic,
to language and its erasure—
from where we stand—
at a distance—
a grand execution of loss, brutal in its subtraction.
Parentheses first, powers and square roots,
divide and multiply,
left to right,
risk
of displacement,
the impact uneven—
so we stop doing
that math,
pretend not to see people fleeing to save their lives.
Blood on hands now scarred and folded
in prayer,
as though God
should save us
from ourselves,
as we look away—again
and again,
deny
what we’ve done, some having lost everything.
We invent a vocabulary of convenience:
call what we do
progress, building,
expanding—
out, up—
subdivisions and skylines,
never enough, having grown
weary
of taking in other points of view.
Trees in ancient groves left unprotected
in high-intensity,
out-of-control burns, others
elsewhere
felled by the thousands—
entire root systems
rendered helpless
to protect
the watershed, to remove and store carbon from the atmosphere.
Clouds will trap more heat over time,
smog and light pollution
posing threats to species that rely
on stars
and the moon
to navigate—
for every action,
a reaction:
the decline in pollinating insects and migratory birds.
A shift in the ecological order of all beings—
this toxic trespass of humans
upon the terrain, our harmful
intrusion—
and yet—
the killing,
the endangering—
this is how
it carries on, either unseen or with impunity.