They said the world would end in fire
but forgot to mention
the kind you cannot see.

Not a blaze of glory
but a slow simmer—
like breath on the back of your neck
in a room sealed shut,
windows sweating from the inside out.

This fire has no flame
but it scorches just the same.
It curls through forests
in drought-dry prayers,
melts glaciers like apologies
never spoken.

It creeps—not with urgency
but with arrogance.
The kind of quiet that pretends
it is harmless.

We named it
progress.
We dressed it in concrete and convenience,
fed it fossil dreams
and called the smoke
civilization.

Now—
oceans rise like ancestors
sick of being ignored.
Winds howl across fields
where food once grew
and now
only dust remembers.

You want proof?
Step outside.
Count the bees that are not there.
Taste the plastic in your morning rain.
Watch the sky turn orange,
then crimson,
then grey—
the way a bruise fades.

We turned Earth
into an eviction notice
addressed to ourselves.
Signed it with carbon
and mailed it
to tomorrow.

But tomorrow
is already knocking.

She stands at the shoreline,
ankles underwater.
She smells of ash
and wilted coral.
She has the eyes of children
born with breath too shallow
and lungs
already losing.

And still—
we debate the heat
like it is a hoax.
Still we auction off the air
like it belongs to the highest bidder.
Still we pave paradise
and ask
why it no longer sings.

Let me tell you something—
climate change is not coming.
It is not a prophecy.
It is not a warning.
It is a mirror.
It is your porch in December
without snow.
It is your garden in July
without bees.
It is your mother’s asthma,
your brother’s flood insurance,
your daughter’s classroom evacuation plan
for wildfire season.

This is not a poem.
This is a diagnosis.
A pulse-check
on a planet
flatlining beneath us.

But
do not write the eulogy yet.

There is time.
Not much.
But enough.

Enough to turn grief
into green things.
To plant rage
and water it with resolve.
To build not just windmills
but willpower.
To stop burning
and start breathing again.

The Earth
does not need us to save it.
It needs us
to stop killing it.
To stop calling destruction
development.
To stop pretending
that policy
is not personal.

So light a match—
but only
to see the truth.
Not to burn
what little hope remains.

And when they ask
what you did
when the sky was falling,
say:

“I learned to listen
to trees.
I wept
and then I acted.
I stopped waiting
for someone else
to care more than I did.”

Say:

“I saw the fire
and chose
not to fan it—
but to fight it.”

Because this fire
has no flame—
but we
are not smoke.
We are spark.
We are breath.
We are still here.
And that
is more than enough
to begin.