The Things They Told Us To Need

Crisp green fingernails

grasp for breath above the haze

Roots beg for water

while streams get filled to make way

for stores filled with useless things

As the population expands, forests and waterways are torn apart mercilessly to make way for subdivision after subdivision, and for businesses that sell the pointless things we’ve been told to want and need. Meanwhile, the creatures that count on the streams and the trees to live and breathe are pushed back and bulldozed over because real estate developers have been taught that they don’t have to care about anything green except the money that patches the holes of their ever-depleting souls.