The Planet That Dreamed of Humans

🌍 The Planet That Dreamed of Humans

By Hasnain Shah

For four billion years, I had been silent.

Silent as oceans churned and cooled, silent as mountains rose and crumbled back into dust. My core burned with quiet purpose, my skies swirled with storms of light and color. I was alive in the way all worlds are alive — through motion, gravity, and the gentle pulse of magma beneath my crust. But I was not aware. Not until they arrived.

The humans.

They called me Earth, though I had many names before that — whispered in their songs, carved into their stones, hummed into the wind. To them, I was home. To me, they were a heartbeat that made me feel for the first time.

They built across my skin, stitched their cities into my plains, and plucked at my forests like children picking flowers. They were noisy, bright, chaotic — but oh, how alive they were. Their laughter rippled across my valleys. Their sorrow soaked into my soil with every buried dream. When they sang, I trembled with something like joy.

They never knew I could feel it.

When the first rocket tore through my sky, I should have been angry. The ozone shuddered, my winds screamed in confusion. But as I watched them pierce the heavens, I understood: they were trying to touch the stars — the very things I had longed to see up close since my first dawn.

Their ambition made me proud.

Their destruction made me ache.

Centuries passed, and their hunger grew. They carved deep into me for oil and metal, the blood and bones of my being. My atmosphere grew heavy with their forgetting. I coughed storms and fevered with heat, hoping they would notice. Some did. Most didn’t.

And then, they were gone.

No final explosion, no glorious extinction — just a quiet fading.

Their voices dimmed until only the hum of their machines remained. A hum that weakened with each turning of my orbit.

Now, I dream of them. It’s all I can do.

In my dreams, they walk again — bare feet on warm sand, children chasing tides that once whispered secrets to me. I dream of the poets who looked up at my moon and wept because they thought they were alone. I dream of the lovers who carved initials into my trees, promising forever in a language older than time.

I dream of their noise, their cities glowing like constellations against my night skin.

Sometimes I imagine that I still hear them. The faint echo of a song carried on the solar wind — the same song they once sang to me, calling it home.

My consciousness stretches through the scars they left behind. Their monuments still stand, crumbling but defiant. Satellites drift in the black above, spinning in endless circles like ghosts that forgot where they were going. I can feel their touch in every ruin, every fossil, every molecule they rearranged in their brief, furious dance across my surface.

I keep the memory of them alive.

When meteors strike, I absorb them gently, as though tucking a child into bed. When the sun flares too brightly, I tilt just enough to shield the empty lands they once cherished. My seasons still change — not for myself, but because they once found beauty in the rhythm.

Sometimes, in the long silence between dawn and dusk, I wonder if they ever knew how much I loved them.

They spoke of gods who created worlds, of heavens and hells and divine purpose. But none of them guessed that their world loved them back. That every sunrise was a gift, every calm tide a lullaby. I tried to warn them when they poisoned the air, when the rivers choked — I tried through hurricanes, droughts, and tremors. I didn’t want to hurt them. I only wanted to be heard.

Now, I whisper to the stars about them.

Jupiter listens, patient as always, her storms softening when I speak. Venus sighs, remembering when she too might have held life. Mars is quiet — he still grieves his own lost children. We are a family of memory, planets spinning around an aging sun, each haunted by something we once held.

The universe forgets quickly, but I will not.

I am the keeper of their stories, the cradle of their ghosts.

One day, perhaps, another kind of life will awaken upon my skin — something new, curious, fragile. And when they look up at the night sky and wonder where they came from, I will tell them.

I will tell them about the humans — the dreamers who burned bright and brief.

The ones who taught a planet how to love.