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Writer's pictureThe Green Phoenix

Babel, by Shelby Newland

It felt like I could see for miles,

Like the earth had grown her own tower to God.

From this palace of pine

I surveyed her kingdom,

Wondered who could punish her

For the pride that drove men

To build upward.

I saw no one for hours.

Heard nothing but my own sighs

Mixing with the wind.

It could have been a song,

Long before I was a thought or a stain,

But in the cooling night my lungs speak

With nothing but a cleaving mist.

My breath is a different language.

Something harder, sharper. Separate.

The last gasps of daylight,

The last clawing, straining efforts

Of the ever slipping sun

Are riches, becoming more like heaven

The nearer they are to earth.

Warmth. Color.

This currency I gather far from home,

This currency of light hearts and not heavy pockets

Will pay my fare for the coming journey.

I descend,

Careful of the mother I passed

On the way up.

I cannot tell her that her children,

With their wings still splinters

And their desperate mouths,

Have nothing to fear from me.

I should be branded by the impotence of my own mouth

But am not.

am welcomed back time and again

to the palace

to the wind.

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