Mars
She is pure wrath, I think. A volcanic raging. She is blood and war, gritted teeth and dripping blades. I, a lonely rover, admire her from afar, deep in the murky dark. There is a vulnerability in her, I realise. A veiled softness in her many deep-etched cracks. She is a blazing vermilion, a point of contrast in the surrounding black, but she races, her movement like the frenzied steps of armies matching through no man’s land. It wasn’t until I let myself sink into her carmine skin, that I saw how soft she could be, how tortured. A lone red dot, full of rifts and craters from past wounds, with no means of protection but by her own fervor.
“I am beauty within hostility” she claims, but to me, she is a single ember in the dark, uncontrollable as wildfire, but she is also cold as ice, her glacial side hidden from view. She is too frigid for life, she tells me. Too hostile, but she yearns for the fire within her to be quenched, the rage buried deep in her core. “I am lonely!” she screams, “I am tired of the fight!” I watch as her skin is ruined by a metallic arsenal, hurtling through the dark into her. The hostility and vulnerability of her are two sides of a copper coin, forever changing. Her closest companions are those of terror and dread. They whisper as they revolve around her, their pleas similar to my own.
"Do not forget your strength, never show your weakness" they hiss, voices like crackling embers, as her beauty is worn away by the barrage above her, her war cry silenced in the black.
