Taking It Back
There she stood. Tall and proud and determined. Keeping her ground. Staring down oncoming cars like a water buffalo stares down Mick Dundee*.
Except this time, unlike the buffalo, she wasn’t going to back down through mind games and meaningless gestures.
She was there to make a statement.
To defiantly ignore the rules of the surrounding urban sprawl.
Enough of living life concealed under the thick layer of asphalt that mankind loved to call progress. It was time to rebel. Uprise.
Reveal that her bright red flowers were not only eye-catching and awesome and smelt fucking good, but that her roots were also pretty damn strong too.
It was the moment to tell humanity that she was taking this shit — aka, the Earth — back.
It would start on a small suburban street and from there spread, until everyone from Bombay, to LA, through to Taipei knew this was for real. Off limits would be the new on limits, green the new black, as vines intertwined their way around the most opulent of structures.
Branches would wrestle away at the most grandiose of monuments. Foliage would bring colour to the most sombre of constructions. Temples, palaces, residences. Malls, subway walls, and concert halls.
Everything, and anything, would be game. Even the places where people had long thought she’d been tamed would blossom into lively disobedience…
“Let’s go?” my cousin asks, bewildered by my sudden disconnection from the world (to be fair he’s quite used to it by now).
We head off, swerving around the tree placed there to warn other drivers of the bumps, dips, and dents that lay ahead. Or better yet — sprouted, not placed, to signal the coming of something new.
