This body is my palace of water and dust.
It is my earth,
my whole,
my entire empire.
Contained within my skin is a world
of complex systems and relationships
too immaculate to comprehend.

I lay myself bare continually.
Exposed vulnerable and strong, I embrace the wind.
Flexible and malleable, I bend and shift but hold my
center--
somehow my center holds.

I contain every natural phenomenon,
and each of them contain me completely.
I see my reflection in the water and I am the water,
I see the bark on a tree and my skin empathizes,
I smile and my soul takes on the wings of the butterflies
and flirts with the leaping wind.

And you come in and you dump your **** in my rivers,
oil and chemicals polluting my veins.
You mine my depths for the gold and discard the soil,
you exploit my purity.
You ignore my warnings and pleads as if you don't understand my language.
You are the ones who don't believe in climate change,
as if facts were fiction.
You don't believe in your impact on my existence.
You carry on as if i am worthy of nothing but disposal
and exploitation,
as if i am not as intrinsically valuable as you are.

Do you not see yourself in me?
Do you not see your own reflection in the waters of my eyes?
Do you not recognize the similarity in our skin?
Our commonality in the blood that pounds like torrential floods
on the windows of our souls
reminding us that we live?

Do you not see the web of life that binds us
so intrinsically together?
We are as inseparable as inhale and exhale.
We need each other--
we are the same process,
the same breath.