We pay to keep what we don’t need,
Old toys, old clothes, old boxes of greed.
A cage of clutter, a rented past,
Hoarding things that never last.
Furniture sleeps behind a lock,
While nature crumbles, tick by tock.
We build and toss, we never learn,
And watch the whole wide planet burn.
Electric wires snake the land,
Laid just a blink ago by hand.
A century and a half, that’s all—
Since we began this reckless sprawl.
Only 150 years,
Of engines humming in our ears,
Of cities stretching toward the sky,
While rivers choke and forests die.
Cars that could have lived for life
Replaced each year in endless strife.
We pave and pave, and still we’re stuck—
Drowning in our plastic luck.
I wish the grid would go pitch black,
So we could learn what we now lack.
No hum of screens, no endless feed,
Just quiet, dirt, and honest need.
I know the toll would not be small—
The fires, the famine, the fatal fall.
But don’t we kill in slower ways
With every wasteful, thoughtless phase?
Maybe dark would bring us light,
A month without the neon night.
To breathe, to feel, to start again—
To learn how not to harm and gain.
The Earth is tired, she bears our scars,
She’s buried under glass and cars.
But she’s not lost, just pushed aside,
Still waiting with a wounded pride.
She gave us mountains, oceans, sky—
We gave her smoke and made her cry.
And all this wreckage, all these tears,
We’ve carved in just 150 years—
A blink, a breath, a flash, a flame—
And still we dare to dodge the blame.
So leave her be. Let silence grow.
Let rivers run and wild things show.
Let skies be dark enough for stars,
Let love replace our need for cars.
I wish we’d stop, just breathe, reset—
Forgive the past, but not forget.
To live with less, to live more true—
And give the Earth what she is due.
-by Victoria
I wrote this poem after reading a story about a family whose storage unit was auctioned off while they were living overseas. I can only imagine how devastating that must have been—to lose not just things, but the memories and meaning tied to them.
But it made me pause and look deeper. At all the stuff we accumulate. The things we buy, store, forget. And then I fell down a rabbit hole—researching landfills, consumption, and the sheer scale of our waste. What struck me hardest was realizing that cars, electricity, and the kind of convenience we now take for granted have only been around for about 150 years.
Just 150 years—a blink in the timeline of the Earth. And in that blink, we’ve done damage that could take centuries, if not millennia, to undo. Some of it… we may never be able to reverse.
This poem is my way of mourning what we’ve lost, questioning what we value, and reflecting on the cost of our comfort. It’s not about shame—it’s about awareness. About love for this planet that holds us, despite everything.
I just want us to see her. To remember that this earth isn’t just where we live. She’s alive. And she deserves better than what we’ve given.