a burned brown

Everything is the wrong color, a bland brown, a sickish yellow, a lack of verdant.

Verdant—what a word with the lush verd- in there.

Verte en francais, bien sur.

Even saying it—verdant—feels lush with the rush of air, the teeth pushing forward, then ending with that arch, that high, that distinctive, that definitive T.

But the world around me isn't verdant. Everything is the wrong color as the grass reaches deep into the ground, deeper and deeper still, looking for water.

The grass has reached the center of the earth, and that scorching molten center has charred it. Has made it a fire hazard. Has made us all forget that a verdant world can exist.

It does, in fact, exist, somewhere underneath this burned brown.

One morning, we'll wake up, and the world will be the right color again, right?