Flicker
by Crystal Craig

I was here before your flame,
before your towers of iron and glass,
before you crowned yourselves masters
of what was never yours.

You confuse the grace of being
with the hunger to possess.
You mistake your brief breath
for a crown everlasting.

But time does not kneel.
Death does not bow to your hammers.
They wait—stone-breathed, patient—
until your noise burns itself down to silence.

Progress is not conquest.
It is the unfurling of a clenched hand,
the softening of the gaze,
the surrender to belonging.

Breathe the resin of cedar.
Taste the copper of your own blood.
Press your skin to the cool flank of stone.
Feel yourself blur at the edges.

This is truth.
This is remembrance.

You are the earth made fragile and awake,
salt of the tide,
a flame that remembers
its kinship with the stars.

I do not ask you to rule.
I ask you to remember—
and in remembering,
to return.