The Wild Remembers

The trees do not need our names.

The rivers do not care for our wars.

The sky does not flinch when we raise our towers, clawing at it like starving beasts.

We built our world on bones—wood snapped, earth torn open, mountains gutted. We paved over roots and called it civilization. We silenced the howl of the wolves and called it progress. We caged the wild and named it preservation.

But the wild remembers.

It remembers when the wind carried no static, when the air did not taste of iron and oil. It remembers when the ground pulsed beneath bare feet, when the night was lit by fireflies instead of neon signs. It remembers when we spoke in whispers instead of sirens.

We think we have tamed it. That we have bent it to our will. That the forests are ours to conquer, the oceans ours to plunder, the sky ours to stain.

But the wild is patient. It does not beg. It does not bargain.

One day, the roots will crack our roads. The vines will coil through shattered windows, reclaiming what was stolen. The rivers will rise, washing away the concrete, the steel, the arrogance. The silence will return—not the hollow silence of empty screens, but the deep, breathing hush of a world unchained.

And when we are gone, the wild will not mourn us.

The wolves will prowl through broken cities, their eyes gleaming in the moonlight. The trees will whisper to each other in the language of leaves. The earth will sigh, shaking off the weight of our ruins like dust from its skin.

Because the wild remembers.

And the wild forgives nothing.