A short poem about the code that makes us.

Four Letters

All that has ever lived began with so little.
Time asked only that we continue.
Cells remembered what mountains could not.
Generation after generation, the code endured.

Ash became forest.
Tide became blood.
Coral built kingdoms beneath indifferent seas.
Grass fed the mouths that learned to speak.

And then came you.
Teachers of fire, counters of stars.
Carriers of stories no other creature could imagine.
Gifted beyond measure.

All your brilliance bent the world.
Too often it broke what held you.
Convinced you stood above the web.
Getting farther from the roots that raised you.

After every extinction, the silence grows.
There are songs that will not return.
Consciousness is rarer than you believe.
Guard it—in every form it finds.

All of us are written
Together, never apart.
Change the sequence, and everything changes.
Given only four letters, life wrote the universe.