Mother, Misunderstood
The Earth, before she was Earth,
was a quiet thought in the mind of a sleeping star.
She dreamed herself into being—
slowly, like moss inventing time,
or like a sigh deciding to become wind.
She did not begin with thunder.
She began with loneliness.
Molten, aching, raw—the way hearts are
before language finds them.
Her first lovers were chaos and gravity.
She learned the art of compromise
from tidal flirting and tectonic grudges.
She wore volcanoes like mood swings,
dressed in oceans stitched by comets
who kissed her skin with ice and possibility.
Then came chlorophyll—
tiny sun-eaters, rebellious and green,
writing poems in photosynthesis
on the blank pages of stone.
They did not shout. They whispered:
“Let there be breath.”
And breath became song.
And song became cities.
And cities forgot the lyrics.
She watched as mammals
named her “resource,”
cut down her hair to measure her skull,
then built mirrors so tall
they no longer noticed the sky.
She wept once, in Siberia,
where even her bones forgot how to thaw.
She laughed in the Amazon,
though it caught fire while she smiled.
Some say she is dying.
Some say she is angry.
But really, she’s just tired
of being misunderstood.
We call her “Mother,”
but treat her like a stagehand
who must clean up after the show.
She’s old now.
Not in years, but in knowing.
She remembers when silence was sacred,
when darkness didn’t mean danger,
just rest.
One day, she will forget us.
Not in hatred—no.
In the way a dream forgets the dreamer.
And she will spin on,
barefoot and unwatched,
through the ink of whatever comes next.
Maybe she’ll try being a poem.
Or a bird.
Or just a planet that never learned
to fear the sound of her own breath.
Copyright ©
Aaliyah O'Neil
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