Fallen Empire

In defense of the peach
that rolled under the passenger seat of your car & was forgotten:
it taught us that some rotting things smell sweet.

In the wake of an unexpected catastrophe the
earth melts into a puddle in the gutter of the universe. Here we
have what’s left of the human race:
a rare species that was shockingly lousy at understanding each other,
repeatedly tore off chunks of their own hearts
& left the sticky debris like a sacrificial offering on the doorsteps of
people who didn’t love them back.

But there was something good here, there was good
here. We built an empire of blue flowers & soft mouths, filled it with
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
There were kids who held hands & they were
incorruptible.

Anyway that’s what I was trying to tell you:
how it played out like a silent film & you had to watch the
faces to know
this was something you couldn’t fix with your hands,
how we gave names to things we didn’t understand, how we punched
holes in the wall & called it art.

By Hannah Gramson

Biography:

I am a 24 year old graduate student living in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing a degree that has nothing to do with writing.