One day, hell split open

and threatened to swallow

the world whole,

because there was _too much_ peace.

The devil, in his accursed voice, said:

_We need destruction._

_It’s what we were made from._

And I almost agreed.

Because for so long,

we’ve spoken in so many versions of peace

that we’ve lost sight of what it really means.

We’ve been taught to believe

that peace is the absence of death,

of pain, of destruction.

And that a perfect world is one without shadows.

But destruction doesn’t

always mean erasure.

And to die doesn’t always mean to disappear.

To destroy can be

to clear the way for something new.

To die can be

to live again, in the endless blue.

Maybe we’re all just afraid,

afraid of anything being gone,

afraid that if we make room for the wrong,

it will ruin everything good.

So we strip away

the flawed, the human,

and call it peace.

And maybe that’s the real lie:

that peace must be clean,

silent, and

obedient.

That it must come

from somewhere

that makes sense.

But what if peace

isn’t meant to be what we think?

What if it lives in mess and contradiction,

in the trembling hands

that hold both mercy and rage.

Could I ever summon a voice,

I’d summon my own,

to speak of the world

as it truly is.

To say:

_Let peace include the broken._

_Let it hold the wrong gently,_

_let it sit beside the wild._

Because if peace demands perfection,

then it’s just another kind of war.