• a tired revolutionary
• slumps in a hidden alley
• and checks the wounds
• the pain
• that won’t stop leaking blood.

//

• opens their jacket
• and looks inside their chest
• to check
• the scars in their heart
• that have just barely scabbed over
• and been ripped open once again.

//

• it is so easy to be tired
• and so hard to be strong
• to get up from that hunched slump
• and stitch up the bleeding and wrap yourself in bandages
• and stand up again
• takes a world’s worth of effort
• and every repetition without any real healing
• only makes it harder.

//

• the only thought that keeps them from lying down
• and staying there
• is that staying down is losing
• and spite
• and hate
• and righteous indignation
• is stronger than the desire
• to give up.
• to sleep for a hundred years
• or to just
• stop fighting
• and merge into the asphalt
• forgotten.
• another lost soul
• in a steel and glass graveyard.

//

• but there are people
• comrades
• waiting for them
• and so they patch themselves up
• and start walking
• the very city
• designed to reopen wounds
• and keep them from succeeding.

//

• but there is something older
• in the dirt beneath the street
• and when that tired freedom fighter
• trips
• they are caught not by the cold concrete
• but by a bed of soft grass
• the loving embrace
• of a mother they never had
• of a planet they fight so hard to save
• of a friend
• telling you its ok to be weak
• and to need help

//

• and the natural energies of the world
• that protective love the earth affords all her children
• seeps up into her heart
• and vines reinforce limbs
• and moss cakes over open wounds
• and a bamboo sprout shoots up
• and lifts that injured hero
• to their feet
• and their soul is fed by the sunlight
• that bounces off skyscrapers

//

• and they stagger
• away from the perfect, uncaring, soulless
• business district
• and back into that foreign familiarity
• that is colorful and vibrant
• and has trees growing through massive cracks in the concrete
• and hundreds of joyous people
• instead of empty streets

//

• a much younger, but in a way ancient, city
• in harmony
• with that natural mother that protects us
• and that we must protect.

//

• a paradise.

//

• and that injured soldier
• that revolutionary without rest
• feels strong enough to collapse
• in the first person’s arms
• and weep
• because they made it.