Fighting Extinction

by Audra Burwell

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I collide

and tangle 

and curl into you 

our bodies starved 

desperate and uninhabited

I search the night sky 

for remembrance 

stars becoming dreams 

smoldering in darkness 

I burn and blister 

and rage in silence 

embers breathed into the lungs 

of a dying Earth

I cry beneath waves 

of salt and sorrow

my chest cleaved to receive

the souls of the dead

I hunger and yearn 

and devour hope 

becoming a child lost in the abyss 

of an indifferent world 

whose flame kindles molten 

refusing to be forgotten