Aggressor’s Stance

Suzanne “Zan” Green

March 18, 2022

What glory or virtue 

is found in destroying 

the lives of others

& there lies the evidence

the shelled apartments

transformed into rubble

& what’s still standing

those buildings have faces

scorched & wailing, the

interiors still showing signs

of what once was living

the rips of patterned paper 

a town’s hospital’s bombed

& a mother dies in labor

Everything left abandoned

& immobile—where once

was warmth & movement

All at once—our efforts seem 

strangely futile—our living

so precious yet precarious

& what’s left for us is loving

In our loving—comes equal

parts losing—& we wonder

how an aggressor becomes

so afraid of their own heart

Suzanne “Zan” Green grew up in the South of England and moved to Texas in 1992. On the outside, Zan is a mother, and a geoscientist—on the inside, a dreamer for the Earth. Their poems are the tender work of healing. Zan has self-published a trilogy titled All Things Holy, and recently, a tribute to their sister Jay, called Wonderings.