Warm, inviting tears flow with mucus along scratched, rosy cheeks.

The coppery scent of blood overwhelms the room,

thinning and dripping into gauze.

Crescent nail shaped scars dot her arms,

nose broken in the Appalachian ridges of a steep mountain range.

Old Mother Earth lays beaten and bruised;

yellowed cloudy eyes flickering stagnantly;

wrinkled like a smoker’s lungs.

Sterile sheets are tossed to the side.

She takes a eon long drag,

flushing the cigarette out on her hospital gown,

and coughs the smoke out in uncontrollable rasps,

Like the flame had somehow lapped into her lungs.

The stench wraps around the room,

wafting into clean corners and murky water puddles.

She spins on her axis, a creaking hospital bed,

staring into white-tiled walls like there are constellations beyond them.

Her forehead feels sluggishly warm then uncomfortably cold again,

Cold chills running down her spine in icy shocks,

Her eyelashes crusted over and barely lifted.

Aged wrinkles are etched over her sullen face, sagged shoulders, and veiny hands.

Earth is a cancer patient, and we are her tumor.