I suffocated in my lonely case.
As we all did, separately,
isolated before we were we.
Not remembering the arms
that held us before our fall.

Thick grit booted us down.
But we fed on the dark,
ate lightless nitrogen,
unlocked an ordinance of freedom.

Wending water-glories, graces
stripped our skins.
We slipped unknowing
through our pain.

I wonder now what heavenward code
of our nucleic harbors drove
us up, before up was.
Now we reach sky.

Our millennia leaves laugh
bargaining with light.
We exhale oxygen gratitudes,
for without dark birth
we could not know this.

And that hard cradle
anchors me still.
My unforgetting roots
claw salvation from it,
recalling our grief
a birthplace for joy.