When the fetus unfurls
A Spirit flees the confines.
It sprints rampant through life to seek.
Having tasted the fruits of pleasure and pain
And run the gamut of livings extent....
It curls and pays obeyance
To all that is bounteous and worthwhile....
Then, when done, it enters the deep black void
And, without malice, quite willingly,
Vanishes!

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Brilliance of a deep blue sky
Whipped about on high
Mare's tails in their latticed way
Spray across my sky.
Wind aloft and rising
In its wild mercurial fling
Driving cavalcades of galloping
White mares to offering....
A magnificence on high
In a quotative display,
Stampeding into vastness,
To illuminate my day.

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So they are still fighting — the humans.
Still drawing borders, building walls, claiming lands as if the sky were theirs to divide.
They are not united. Not yet.
And until they are, we will not go to them.

(In a classroom on a distant alien world)

Student:
Ma’am, why haven’t we contacted Earth yet?
We have the technology. We could speak to them — today, even now. So why don’t we?

Teacher:
That’s a good question. One we ask often.
But before I answer, I want you to think. Really think.
Let’s look at their history — the humans.

Long ago, they hunted.
They killed to survive, to eat, to rule.
They were more violent then — wild and afraid.
But over time, they settled. Built homes. Grew crops.
And slowly... they harmed less. Just a little less.

Civilizations rose. Then empires.
And with them, came war — endless wars over territory, over pride.
Then came their modern age. What did that bring?
Serfdom. Slavery. Racism. Greed.
Some of those poisons still linger in their world even now.

Yes, they advanced — in tools, in science, in machines.
But tell me:
Did their souls keep pace with their inventions?

As they built satellites, they still built prisons.
As they mapped the stars, they still judged by skin.
So, in our terms, they are not yet developed.
Because true development is not measured in machines —
but in mercy.

Once the people of Earth learn to accept one another,
once they choose peace not as a treaty but as a truth,
then they will be ready.
Then we will speak to them.

Until then…
they are too busy surviving their own chaos.
We are beyond that now.
We gave up the things that destroy.
Hatred. War. Ego.

And the irony?
They think we would attack them.

(Far away, among alien officials)

High-ranking official:
Earth has been declared a no-contact zone.
No ships may enter. No probes. No whispers.
The planet is to be left untouched.
Observed, but never interfered with.

They are… an ecosystem.
Nothing more.
Just like the forests they fail to protect —
they, too, must be left to grow or wither on their own.

Let’s see how long it takes.
Let’s see when they finally look up, not in fear…
but in peace.

(Back on Earth…)

A television broadcast crackles:

“The Amazon Rainforest — home to countless species —
has been declared a protected zone.
All activities harming its balance are now banned.
No hunting. No poaching.
Left alone by humans, the forest may finally breathe.
The ecosystem may heal.”

If only they knew —
they, too, are a forest still learning to grow.

A is for Abigail, who shared with you a kindergarten trauma and
then forgot who you were in eighth grade, like Belinda, who
left without a word one sunday morning after mass, C is
Catalina, your best friend’s ex-best friend, who went
with you to Daana’s book launch in texas, and
Enrique, who you planned to room with in college but you hear from friends
crashed his car into a tree and joined the saints, but Flores had
another kid and his man bun is
slicker than ever and Gumaro, who you helped teach
english in fourth grade is still
hitting the gym beside Hiris, even as she
works at la perla full time and overtime, beside Isabella who
no white girl would talk to in middle school because they said she
smelled like dirt, or Juliana, punching
numbers into a cash register at the dollar general thinking
of falling in love with Kruz who made a
perfect vanilla cupcake candle in home ec but couldn’t
cook steak to save his life.  
Lucio remembers kissing you on the mouth in the church
nursery but he is now engaged to a white girl you’ve
never met, and he remembers a particular
messy Maria who would draw like her life
depended on it, and a Nadia who would cry in english 11
because her parents couldn’t help her with the homework
but still kiss him after her soccer games, who no longer
bothers to call Olivia, even though they were teammates for
a decade and now she works at her own sports shop with
a daughter who could have gone pro if only.
Profe, who was a migrant “helper” at your elementary school,
laughs at it all, remembering yelling at parents in spanglish,
although you heard her husband yelling at her on the phone at lunch,
laughing when Quito broke one of the chairs that the school bought with
its 4 million dollar bond that drained money and morale, who went
out with Romani and started a band in seventh grade that took
longer than usual to fizzle out, and the bullying stopped for a while, though
Sergio would never forget how it felt to bend down for hours with
bad black bruises up his back, wouldn’t ever stop
reliving every labored breath spent both here and there.  
And Thalia couldn’t even make a living, recalling almost
forgotten days of swingsets and slurping
pelon pelo rico tamarindo under the orange tube slide.  
Her ex-husband Umberto everybody but the feds
forgot about, and V is for Victor, the high school goalie who had to quit because he
strained his wrists in the fields, like Wanita, who is trying to raise
money for her second hip replacement, like father Xavier, who carves statues of
woodland creatures for the children he could never have, and
Yesenia, who sewed and sewed until her fingers curled and her
forehead wrinkled beyond repair, and she tells you that Zaida, who made the
best tamales in town, is now gone to the saints, and no longer
fears anything, even the government and their obsession with
small white slips of paper.

So much in a name, in a hyphen, in a tilde, but no, it
should be under V—“virgulilla,” and their names should be
written in your address book but instead
they’re in a list at some office in
the States underneath “undocumented” and “illegal.”

A girl once twirled in her garden bright,
Her laughter dancing with morning light.
Unaware, across the gate,
A man stood still — a twist of fate.

She froze mid-spin, his shadow near,
A stranger’s gaze, a rising fear.
She fled inside, heart clenched with fright,
Curtains drawn, away from sight.

The morning after, schoolbag tight,
She stepped into the waking light.
And saw the man — calm, still, and kind…
With quiet eyes, yet stone-cold blind.

No threat, no stare, no lurking harm,
Just silence wrapped in human form.
That day she learned what masks can hide,
Not all are wrong, not all are right.

For even truth wears borrowed face,
And safety isn't always grace.
The world, it spins in shades of grey —
Not all who watch can take away.

while taking coffee
in a particular place
******* on chocolate torte
slightly melted,
the lord of the manor,
reading.

grew a headache
from the stuff, too much
sweet , too much
information, all too true
to pattern.

so we drove home, and
got on with it.

nissan huts.

There was no when. Only hush, folded in silence so deep it hadn't yet learned the name "dark."

A breath, not taken but imagined by something that would one day remember being God.

Time crouched in the corner of nowhere, unstrung and unborn, counting moments it had yet to invent.

Then the exhale.

Not wind.

Not sound.

But everything!

Light in its first vulnerability, heat like a promise, matter scattering like doubt that finally believed itself.

Stars bloomed like rumours, planets tumbled into questions, and gravity whispered, "Stay."

The cosmos blinked, still wet with origin. And in that blink, myth became memory draped in motion.

Before laws, before names, before the ache of wondering, there was this: a sigh so infinite it sang itself into becoming.