The Earth Breaks Apart

The earth had absorbed a lot by the time this happened.

The pollution. The blood. The bodies. The curses of the broken covenant.

The earth mourns and fades away. That was the beginning of it. A mourning that moved through the soil and rock like grief through a body.

The haughty people of the earth languish.

The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof.

Because they had transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant.

Therefore — because of this, as a direct result — the curse devoured the earth.

And they that dwelt therein are desolate.

The cities became empty. The joy of the timbrel ceased. The vine languished. No singing in the streets.

And then the full force of it.

The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.

Three verbs. Each one stronger than the last.

Broken. Dissolved. Moved exceedingly.

The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard.

The image of a man who cannot walk straight. Who grabs for walls that aren't there. Who stumbles and cannot stop stumbling.

And shall be removed like a cottage.

The most solid thing in human experience — the ground itself — behaving like a temporary structure in a heavy wind.

The transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it.

Not punished from outside.

Weighted down from within.

The earth falling under the accumulated weight of what humanity had done to it.

And it shall fall, and not rise again.

Final. Complete.

Not a natural disaster with a recovery timeline.

A final accounting.

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