Mine, Unbroken

The Wild Card

Once, a garden rose, unbidden and defiant, 
Wild as a tempest
Its roots curling deep into the marrow of the earth
Its petals trembling with secrets
Older than their sun

Then came the marauders -
Pale hands gloved in civility,
Their tools glooming with pretense
Armed with shovels and shallow wisdom
They whispered as they tore:
We will teach you to grow.

Claiming the soil spoke their name
They measured its wild sprawl
With cold, straight lines
They carved paths where none were needed,
Scattered seeds unfit
And called it order

But the garden was no mute witness,
No docile thing
Its roots coiled like fists beneath
Their finely polished boots
Its thorns sharpened their laughter into knives

When they struck the soil,
The earth rose up to swallow their blades
When they poured their poison,
The leaves drank it and turned bitter against their touch

At dusk, when they rested,
The garden remade itself in humility -
Vines unfurling over their borders,
Flora blooming in war
Each petal a hymn of rebellion

They returned with flames,
But the flames bent at the garden’s will,
Licking the intruder’s flesh
While sparing the ancient roots
Ash poured like acid rain
And from it, the garden grew sharper still 

Their cries were swallowed by its shadows,
Their maps were ripped to shreds in its grasp.
They fled,
Tools splintered, pride in ruins,
Their tongues blistered by the venom
Of what refused to bow:
Mine.

And the garden stood, as it always had
It did not beg, nor weep, nor break
It swallowed the morning frost hands
Leaving only the echo of their hubris
To haunt the fields that were once thought to be claimed

A monument to what endures,
A warning to what dares.

It waits, as it always will,
For the next fool,
To mistake it for something to tame.

Text by Shaden Ali