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Graeme Feb 6
My young, eager eyes lapped up the forest as fervently as they could.
Novelty was what they hungered for, as my axe did for ****** wood.
It was fresh. New.
The Pacific Northwest wasn't ready for us.
Wife and I moved out here a couple months ago with the promise we'd make a good, honest living out here.
Y’know, these trees are so beautiful… real shame we’ve gotta cut ‘em all down for a whole lot less than what we was promised.
Progress… for what?
I don't think I wanna do this anymore…
but I must.
Onto the next tree. Hope this one's easier to cut down.
Written on 2025-02-05.

This piece is set in the perspective of a young logger, who moved to the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s during the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States. It was inspired by an Aidin Robbins video on YouTube about a rainforest in Idaho. I conceived this at the end as I realized as Aidin existentially asked, “what am I doing here [in this forest]?”, I realized that the people who cut down the forest as he showed a log cabin and talked about the loggers, who must have thought the same thing that some of them must have definitely questioned the prospect of chopping down such beautiful trees and irreversibly ruining ecosystems for the sake of profit, striking it rich for what they were told was “a better future”.
Kaavya Jul 2018
There are too many words in English
(for me, at least)
for what a fire does.
None of them tell me
what a fire is -
for that, i suppose
all you need
are images
and memories
and eyes.

And there is no point
(for anybody at all)
trying to describe what a fire looks like.
No point in charcoal imagery
and allusions to hell
and poems with holes in them.
Because that’s all a fire leaves behind.
Charcoal
and what feels like hell.
This poem would have holes anyway.

But there is always a reason
to fill these holes
with words.
Why is it
there are always words
when there are holes?
Oh,
why are there words?
Yes, words are human
but god,
so are the holes,
those between the spidery embers
that we dare to call trees.
(which are human too.)


And since I’m also made
of holes
and words
and dying embers
I (instead) focus on those holes between trees
and think that
wood is not really food for fire
and realize that
this wasn’t supposed to be about me
and pretend that
I am not at a loss,
I've never seen the recent fires in the Pacific Northwest in person. But that's not important, because now all I hear about and smell in the air and feel - is fire.

— The End —