She would have Her revenge. Though born in a purity of violent collisions, fire, and molten lava, She cooled to a majestic beauty and lived in peace for billions of years. But eventually, upright creations evolved on Her skin- at first a whisper of a tickle, hardly noticeable, a tiny itch in the night. But the creations became a virus, a cancer, splitting and mutating into different strains, coating Her skin from pole to pole. They brought fire, slaughter, and a scraping and re-sculpting of Her skin. It wasn’t too much at first to bother Her. She could take a change in Her look, and some of the virus wasn’t too damaging and even created things of beauty, adornments for Her exterior. It was when the virus began to bore into her pores, that She began to feel the extent of this violation. They cut, sliced, and injected metal rods into her delicate skin. They even created shocks that rattled Her dermis, creating shivers that even the virus felt and questioned. They dug into Her waters, th...
The country was burning. Though the days of quarantine repeated endlessly like the same diary entry written over and over on an ancient palimpsest, now there was a real change, and it came in flames. The stones that laid the foundation of the country rested atop the blood and bones of the peoples who previously lived on the land and on the backs of stolen peoples forced to build the structures of this new great nation. Each injustice: whether it was the lash, noose, infested blanket, bullet, blade, or humiliation that was taken out on these people was now being repaid, with interest. The catalyst was yet another black man killed in broad daylight, live on video- a blue knee pressed deeply into his neck for almost 10 full minutes. The peace-keeper acted calmly and nonchalantly, like he had done this a million times, but this time he lit the flame on a wick that was hundreds of years old, and soaked in an accelerant that was just waiting for the right match. On top of the generations of ...