We are the creators, constructing steel bodies as replacements of bones that will one day rot. Our calloused palms rise with half-bird fingers to plaster our names onto skyscrapers. We want to be remembered, molding cities towards galaxies, wanting to reach the heavens like the words that crafted the Tower of Babel before being leveled by dialects. We forget about the half-drained children huddling in forty degree angles, their hollow bodies curved into waning moon crevices, ribs already seamed along the earth, just part way buried in tombs. Children who fight in grief-stricken lands to breathe, where living past the age of five would be considered a luxury. We forget about the clay bodies that crumbled like dust when first shots pierced the air with hungry screams. The dreamers with tissue paper hearts now laced into the ground. We forget about the young women who never wanted their bodies stolen, thrown around, claimed by unwanted eyes. The men who were labeled queer, stitched silent silhouette voices into cement because who would believe they could be raped? We forget about the sparks that bloomed into flames, lined across corpses of trees, then cities, then flesh bound to wood. The ones with willow hips who were burned alive for what they believed in. We forget about spinning seas, tides that sweep apart homes with magnetic arms. We forget shaking grounds, fault lines, dancing thunderstorms, plates falling, tears that speak a language of their own. We raise kids with factory machine brains and mechanical lips wired to screens and assembly line dreams. Opinions are colored and categorized, cut away with scissor mouths. We try to preserve flesh and organs in an attempt to revive eternity through temporary skin. There’s a relief in not being able to live forever on this earth, in not being able to reverse the waves of time. It gives a chance to appreciate beauty in flaws, in embracing our faults, in realizing that humans cannot control the universe. Maybe we’re just slowly destroying ourselves.