In the city, our dirty hands go unseen,
because the city is made of hands like ours.
Steel forgives us. Concrete keeps our secrets.
Smoke belongs where smoke was taught to live.

There, damage wears a uniform,
ruin follows rules,
and every wound looks intentional,
signed, permitted, planned.

But in the forest, our touch is loud.
A single scar on bark
shouts louder than a thousand streets.
Plastic screams against moss.
Oil stains water that never learned our language.

What we build among ourselves is called progress.
What we leave among the innocent
is called a crime.

The city absorbs our sins
because it was born from them.
Nature recoils,
not because we are evil,
but because it remembers
a world that never needed our hands at all.