Losing Grace

My memory is dry,
gray dust in the back of my mind.
There once were trees,
towering, breathing things,
a dark green canopy against a blue
that has long since faded to a dirty white.

There was a woman.
They say she had a child.
A soft voice that feels borrowed,
like a line from a forgotten script.
It’s said the child was me.
No lullaby, no lesson.
Just an existence.

There was a rainbow,
a brilliant, impossible curve of hope
arched over the deluge.
And then the storm came—the last one.

Only cracked earth now,
miles of sun-bleached sediment
where the water once danced.
The oldest ones whisper of blue horizons
and the smell of salt.
But it sounds like a dream,
a fairy tale for a dying world.

I was once like you.
Then I looked into a pool of salvaged rainwater
and I saw me,
the weary knowledge in my own eyes.

It’s the last bloom on the ruined balcony,
a single flag against the revelation.
The moment its petals drop,
the grace will be gone.