The Witness

by Yilin S, 14

The sky was so blue

I no longer saw it

overexposed, stripped raw,

It drained into something 

that just watches,

a color stretched so thin

I learned how to disappear.

The blue pressed back

Against her eyeballs, and so she stood

Wide-eyed, never blinking

for it had already decided something

and was waiting for her to catch up.

Trees stood like witnesses,

their leaves murmuring in a language

too old to translate.

Roots clenched the earth beneath them,

holding onto stories

the ground refuses to confess.

The sun hung low,

not warm, just observant,

a dull eye pressed against the sky.

Its light spills carelessly,

making shadows sharper,

teaching her where to hide.

Grass bends under the weight of quiet.

When there is nothing more to be said but

What should be and no one says it

The children say it, but no one listens 

They are in chairs facing the wall

Only the wind grazes their lips

brushing past without commitment.

Somewhere, something is breathing

not loudly enough to name,

but enough to be felt.

I used to think nature was honest.

But it practices restraint.

It shows you beauty

the way a blade shows its shine

without revealing an edge.

Everything here survives by brute force.

The flowers don’t mention the rot beneath them.

The birds don’t sing about what went missing.

The earth keeps swallowing its own history

and asking us to admire the view.

I’ve stood here too long,

long enough to feel unnoticed until–

The sky did not look away.

Not for a moment.

I wasn’t sure

whether I was observing nature

or being quietly remembered by it.