It begins quietly —
a tremor beneath the ribs,
the thought that there will never be enough:
time, love, breath, belonging.
From that fear, a hunger rises.
It learns to want for the sake of wanting,
and soon it names this hunger progress.
Greed has no limit.
It measures beauty by possession,
counts forests as profit,
calls the sea a resource,
and trades a child's future
for a barrel of oil.
It drills through mountains for what glitters,
skins the earth for warmth it no longer feels,
builds towers from the bones of what was alive,
strips the lungs of the planet,
and sells the air back to us.
Animals vanish quietly;
fields turn to dust;
workers fall — uncounted — behind closed gates.
It trades wonder for control.
We could have stood still —
watched the wave rise and fall,
listened to the wind threading through the trees,
known that beauty was already complete.
But we did not —
and now the rivers cough their last silver breath,
the soil forgets the sound of rain,
birds migrate toward nowhere,
and cities glow like open wounds.
Greed invents reasons.
It writes laws to sanctify taking,
scripts of progress to drown the cries,
markets that rename theft necessity.
It sells us comfort in exchange for silence,
and we sign — grateful, blind.
The maps are blank where life once lived.
The house we called home burns slowly
behind a digital wall.
We stand at the edge of the fire,
hands full of ashes,
still calling it inevitable —
and then we ask why nothing remains.
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