They say the world once bore no veins—
no threads of brine,
no weeping mouths carved in earth.
Only silence.
Only dust-throat wind
under a hollow-mouthed sky.

Then came the First Mourner.

Not born, but broken.
A shape made from absence.
Their sorrow split stone.
Their cries taught gravity
how to kneel.

The earth, startled, drank.
And from that swallowed ache
rose a spring—
clear as memory,
bitter as bone.

The sky, until then unburdened,
watched.
And when it wept,
it learned to fall.

This was the covenant:
for every sorrow borne true,
a drop of the world’s marrow returned.
Grief became a currency.
Rain, a reply.

Oceans swelled with inheritance.
Rivers wandered like rumor.
Lakes pooled in the hollows
where love had collapsed.

And for a while,
this was sacred.

But men grew clever with their sorrows.
They fermented anguish for flavor.
Bottled ache and sold it as nectar.
Taught mirrors to mimic mourning
and called it truth.

The sky, still loyal,
poured out its heart.

But it no longer knew
the shape of honest sorrow.

And so, the floods came—
not as retribution,
but confusion.

The fires walked freely—
not from rage,
but because the wells no longer wept.

The clouds grew thin.
The earth forgot the taste
of true lament.

Now, the world shudders
at our pageants of pain.
The rain withholds.
The roots crack.
Even the springs echo hollow.

But not all hearts have calcified.

Some still mourn in secret tongue—
not to be seen,
but to sanctify.

They trace the riverbeds with bare feet.
They mend what mold has claimed.
They do not cry aloud.
They undo.

No thunder blesses them.
No crowds sing their names.
But where they pass,
the drought lingers less.

The sky hovers,
unspeaking,
watching.

They say
there will come a day
when one quiet gesture
will be enough to break the dam.

Until then,
the ones who remember
move like shadows
beneath a sleeping rain.