A Malu’s daydream of Neverland

The dark-brown earth pressed close around us
With familiar pebbles, roots, snug but closing porosities 
and the sleepy sleeping young.
The earth roared from afar and the reverberation 
shook the darkness so violently that our antennae rattled,
and whipped against the walls,
against our bodies and against the unknown unknown.

Familiar paths folded shut; 
other splits opened with smells we’d never known. 
With almost dead-working antennae, we ran blind
running over one another, fleeing our known 
world that’s rapidly metamorphosing into the unimaginable.
We seized the sleepy young and ran torch-to-touch,
passing them from jaw to jaw while the deep-voiced thunder 
roared through our homes without ending. 

Something warm seeped through the broken earth. 
They fell first in light drops, then in heavy bursts, 
each impact trembling through the mud 
and disorienting us further.
As they collected themselves, they moved around us—not pooling, 
meandering through the soil,
slipping into cracks, descending beneath our feet.
They seemed to know their way through the earth.
Following hidden channels toward somewhere.

We climbed over the roots,
one over another as the flood rose, 
thick, unfamiliarly salty, 
carrying iron that even our broken antennae sensed.
With a scent that smothered the remaining trail we knew.
Sisters slipped beneath the dark surfaces. The young, 
the young chuckled as they floated like scattered seeds 
until we caught them again. 

That wasn’t rainwater filtering down from the world above. 
At the surface, the sun was already saying her goodbyes, 
staining the dust-gagged air with a dull red light. 
Not far away, flies feasted on our friendly neighbours—
the giants, the husbandmen.
Beneath them, their liquid found its way through
the broken earth and into our home.