This is the axis upon which your existence spins, widdershins The world plummets onto the expanse of your back and you crumble under its weight Knees buckling, lungs burning, screaming, gasping for air But you do not let it fall Mountains burrow their snowy peaks into your skin Oceans roll past your shoulder, spilling briny rivers to mingle with your veins A sleepy valley tucks into your nape and crushes flowers against your flushed vessel Great tectonic plates shift beneath your shoulder blades, sliding and locking in place And yet, if they split your skin open, they’d find scarlet, not ichor Tell me of the people who pressed handprints against cave walls And marveled at the sparks spat out by fire Those hungry children who chased the sky and the stars and everything in between And loved and wept and raged and laughed Tell me how they endured the centuries and lived with its history scrawled on them I’ve heard of loss and heartbreak in stories, of death and disease Of pain so great, you shatter apart in madness You lift your head and whisper We live for the brighter days, the softer days For nothing is forever for our kind, neither joy nor grief -Sudiksha Karthika