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The Last Wildfire
What happened to time?
Year
2019
Media
Photography, publication
take me to California in 20**
the air is hot and dry
the land sandy and burned
whose footstep is it?
it must have been the last survivor
what a shame
i heard that it used to be beautiful out here
Paradise
is her name, they said
take a close look at this plant
what happened to it?
i can’t make sense of it
the texture reminds me of a piece of beef jerky
that doesn’t taste like meat
a spiky thorn
so soft actually
when you touch it
it dissolves to dark ashes
as if it was never here
i stand on the road for what feels like a long time
it’s surprisingly quiet
like a void
without life and death
only black matters
sucking sound out of my norm
i’ve never seen anything so beautiful and sad
at the same time
what happened to time?
a car
is what it used to be
an accident
threw it to the forest off the road
a fire
brought it back to visibility
a passenger
documents its current state
a photo
tells not much except for
a catastrophe
after another catastrophe
thousands of fires
hundreds of lives
billions of $$$$$
here is one tree
shedding her tears
nature is resilient and patient
they are going to be fine, finer than us
unless we change us
NOW
or not
but i really think that we should
California
the last wildfire
xiaowen zhu
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