Dry

I come from a dead world.
Arid, daunting and lonely.

The rivers didn't dry because the sun was flaring
They dried because the trees were too dead to have roots.

We build our houses in their yards,
stole their rivers too save them in our tanks,
took their sprouts to decorate our streets
and killed them for getting in our way.
The food wasn't scarce because we were too many,
or because the soil was tired, and sick... and sick and tired.
Not even because we were too lazy
and had the nerve to belittle the farmers.
The food was scarce because we were,
to the best of our abilities, quite selfish.

Either too rich to care, too poor to help, or a little of both,
we raged against the apathy of the very people
that we were letting die.
Some tried to fix the words. Many tried to fix others.
Most of us fought tooth and nail...
for our own pleasures and beliefs.
Too wrong to change, too perfect to repent,
victims of the society we made with every breath.

Our hearts used to be as broken as bloody were our hands.
Now they are dry like rivers.
Scarce like food, rootless and dead like trees.
Polluted like the air and tired like the soil.
Daunting they are, and lonely, like our world.

All murderers, all dead.
We just don't know it yet.