Not quite a poem, maybe a musing—just something I wrote a few weeks ago, as I stood between comfort and conscience.

 

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What am I?

How do I raise a slogan— Save forests, save biodiversity—
when the walls that shelter me stand on the graves of trees?

How do I call this destruction wrong,
when my own comfort was carved from the same ruin?

Wasn’t there once a soul who begged me to stop?
Didn’t I scoff, laugh, brush him aside,
because I needed a home more than the trees needed life?
And now—
when another voice echoes mine,
when another hand wields the axe I once ignored,
why does it hurt?

Where was my love for the earth
when I needed four walls to call my own?
What did I tell those who asked me to spare a tree?
“How can I live without a home?”
“Where else should I go—under the trees?”
I said it without guilt, without hesitation.

So now, when someone says the same to me,
why does my heart ache?
Am I a fool—
too weak to deny myself shelter,
too numb to stand for the trees I mourn?

Am I too needy to have a home,
too heartless to stand for those innocent tree lives?

If I wish to stop another from taking a home
built by killing a forest,
shouldn’t I destroy my own first?
Or am I simply confused?
Or worse—

a selective hypocrite?