“When the Soul Splinters”
by Crystal Craig

There are nights
when even my bones flinch
at the dream of teeth—
silent, gliding, ancient
consuming innocence
as if it were nothing.

Alligator mouths
crack open
to swallow whole languages,
whole ways of knowing,
while blank-eyed believers
chant praise to
a toxic orange haze
rising like false dawn.

I have seen the redwoods fall.
Not cut—
harvested like trophies,
stacked like currency
for tyrants who trade dollars
for what was once
sacred.

A great sorting hum
vibrates beneath everything—
binary pulses decide
who is seen
and who is erased.
The never-haves multiply
while Gaia suffocates
beneath the weight
of what we call progress.

Tell me—
is greed not the first betrayal?
The oldest forgetting?
The worm in the seed?

I feel it
in the hollow behind my ribs—
my soul,
cracked and weeping
for a world I cannot cradle.

But listen—
Breathe.
Breathe, soul.

This is not yours to carry alone.
There are still the Kind Ones.
I have seen them:
those who wield privilege
like a sword of duty,
who whisper to trees,
who guard the wild with quiet eyes,
who walk the long road
for justice—
not praise.

They are real.
And I am one of them.
I must be.

We are threads
of an older fabric
woven with values
that will not burn.

We must not flinch
from the dark.
We must not become
what we fight.

Nature does not evolve
through sameness.
It demands wild divergence.
It celebrates the unexpected.

So breathe, soul.
Gather your shattered edges
like flint in your palms.
There is still fire
inside you.

Let it not be rage.
Let it be light.

Let us be
what we demand of this world.
Let us rise
before we perish.

Because life
for its own sake
is not enough.
But life
offered back
to the whole
just might be.