I am not in a better place.
McLean, VA
2021, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
The sky is stained a beautiful, vibrant crimson,
my feet burrowed in the hot sand,
which burns at my feet as I stand.
The brown waters brush up to my skin,
white foam beginning to build up
and bubbling at my knees.
The shells are gone at shore,
small dips in the sand
where they used to be.
The birds, which used to fly,
are now elsewhere in the infinite sky.
There is fog in the air,
Scattered, dispersed, and disorderly.
They are the same small clouds
that have followed us everywhere.
You stand across from me,
Smiling as you run over,
Laughing as you say,
“It’s so great that you’re with me
on such a beautiful day.”
And as you run over, just about to touch me,
My feet disappear,
My hands vanish from sight,
And my touch has been lost.
Because I am not here.
I am not standing with my feet beneath the sand,
My eyes admiringly gazing at the burnt, injured sky.
I am not here, thinking of how the birds must simply be elsewhere,
Or of how the seashells are so innocently absent.
I could be living had you not been so ignorant,
So oblivious, and so selfish,
To believe that the fiery skies were typical,
That the brown seas were prevalent,
And that the fog was composed of friendly, accommodating clouds.
In your own polluted head,
With rising ignorance like the rising waters,
You once said that if lives were killed,
It would be okay.
You once said that the poor children who were hurt,
are now in a better place.
But I am not another random life.
I am not another random girl.
I am not another “poor child.”
I am the daughter you lost.
I am the girl that could’ve lived, laughed, and cried.
But instead,
The waters you gave me were clouded in murk,
Too polluted to quench my thirst,
Microplastic chipped in the waters,
Which stabbed my body from within.
My head was just above water,
Gasping for air, for life,
But my death is marked with your stained hands,
Your bloody fingerprints,
And the breath of your haunting words.
As you once said,
The poor children that were hurt
are in a better place.
But I can assure you,
I am not in a better place.
Reflection
Reflection
As I initially wrote the poem, I felt a slight discomfort from writing in a point of view of someone who does not understand how global warming is changing our environments. The speaker in the beginning of my poem is neglecting and ignoring the pain that our nature is feeling, but is instead twisting it into something positive. There are millions of people that continue to believe climate change is not real or that polluted and rising seas will not have a great effect. This comes at a cost of millions of children who must suffer at people's ignorance. While writing the second half of the poem, I felt an anger towards the people who are personally in my life who are not doing anything to help the environment. I've learned a lot from writing this poem about my personal relationships, my community, and society as a whole. The message I'm sending is that not speaking up or actively trying to save the environment is part of the problem. We need to save our water little by little, which will eventually add up to large amounts that we are conserving. Taking shorter showers, using machines only when needed, and composting food scraps will conserve our water and keep our ecosystems alive.