i will stay.
as young elephants follow their herd til death, through bitter sand and acrid ground. they know nothing but this. i will stay
as the thousand year old pine deepens its roots into the very core of the Earth, bounding, stretching, winding. it is but here. i will stay.
i will stay as the boulders in the forest that have sat unmoving for years. covered by moss older than my body, eroded by snowfall older than my soul. i will stay as the river that has lasted all droughts and survived every freezing. it has changed, yes, but it has stayed. i will stay
as the city of Greece. its ruination never caused it to stray. it is not weak for crumbling, no, but mighty for standing as long as it did.
i will stay as Yanartas, the fire that has been kept burning by generation after generation after generation after. i will stay as the ash that seeps from it into the ground, only to be hardened into igneous rock, then metamorphic, then sedimentary then. i will stay, i promise
just as the lovers in pompeii found bones tangled around each
other. faces long gone from the cascade of soot, but do faces really matter anyways? i will stay like the light from dying stars
blazes for all to see. long ago gone, but still flickering here whether anyone cares or not. nonetheless. i will stay.