When the World Forgets to Listen

O Grandmother who never sleeps,

you've been hanging there longer than truth itself -

watching our small and stubborn movements,

how we build our houses on wounds

and call it civilization.

I write to you from the trembling dark,

where streetlights hum like tired spirits

and the lake forgets its own reflection.

The earth feels heavy tonight.

My hands smell like the century -

plastic and exhaustion -

and I am starving for something holy.

You,

who pull the tides without a sound,

who rise,

even when the smoke of our doing covers half the sky -

tell me,

how do you forgive us?

You've watched me longer than my own bones remember.

When I was only breath and blood-hope

you hung above the longhouse roof,

silver-faced and endless,

pulling tides through the marrow of our people.

Do you remember when we still spoke your name in firelight?

When hunters prayed to your face for guidance.

When the stories called you Sister.

When women danced under your full gaze,

their laughter a prayer older than shame.

Now they call you satellite.

A cold thing to be charted -

conquered -

as if you could ever be owned.

I used to watch you with my mother,

her lips whispering words I barely understood.

She said you kept the stories

for when we forgot the songs.

You'd hum them to the rivers

so they'd remember how to move.

Now I see you through glass and signal -

still beautiful, still untouchable -

and I wonder if you still see us?

Are we children of the same dust

or have we become strangers,

loud and lost and certain of everything.

Tonight, I confess

I am tired of being strong -

of being the quiet witness

to my own unraveling.

The world calls it resilience.

You would call it survival.

I don't come asking for answers -

only to sit in your quiet,

to be reminded that light can be gentle,

that not everything that glows must burn.

When you pass over my roof tonight shine soft -

on the restless,

the tired,

the trying,

the ones who still speak to you

as if you could answer.

And maybe you do -

in the language of silence,

in the pull of water,

in the ache that feels like remembering.

Take this letter, Grandmother,

fold it into your craters and keep it

and I will know you heard me.

Let them know we are still here.