euphemisms for the water cycle
Chicago, IL
2021, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
if the water in our bodies is runoff from a starborn planet,
can I pretend that 60% of my body is stardust?
do I dare dream that I am born from celestial miracle?
that the space between two hydrogens and an oxygen is
simply an alternate path to stardom, where water
took root and made me my own planet, an ocean where blue
could be the distance between me and a brighter future?
blue, that is the color of both depth and distance—
where maybe, we can afford to pretend that the
the ocean is deep enough, blue enough to grant us
absolution, even as the water rises to consume us.
the eye of our self-made hurricane,
a tipping precipice before the call of catastrophe,
someday, our children’s children will look at the brewing storm
we have left to them and rage the same way the water does,
clawing at the remnants of an emptied-out planet.
the ground, cracked and dry, drought and famine coated in dust—
it hungers, but the water runs off it, bypasses every sign of
unaddressed appetite so the Earth is still empty, left to break itself
into pieces because the water could not stay. it was Tantalus at the
tree, unable to drink,
an all-consuming thirst, parched and wanting.
as the water runs off,
I watch starpower steal it into the sky.
an insulated Earth chokes on its own steam,
a swelling sun for a future generation,
iron at the core, hydrogen-fused and hungry.
in the event of cosmic karma, I wonder
if they will curse our inaction, if the water
will have all been squirreled away by
solar shockwaves and a dying telluric wail.
whether or not we will send out flares when
we die, whether or not there will still be
blue on this planet when we go.
before that cosmic calamity, the sky will not keep the
water. it will fall as rain, a coalescence of water vapor
until it grew too heavy for the sky to carry,
and we will acknowledge that our earth is mostly water,
and our bodies are mostly water.
our fragile skin and skeleton running on our ability to drink,
to satisfy our thirst, to satisfy our survival—
when we die, do we mourn at the grave
for the body or for the rain?
if the pull of gravity kept water falling, gave water the weight it needed,
could us children play at being Atlas because it was not the sky on our
shoulders but the weight of it,
a gravitational pull anchoring the water to the ground but
never enough to stop our swallowing sun
from stealing it back into the sky above.
a tug of war we kept playing as the temperature rose,
cupping our hands to drink, hoping that it would not
burn us when the water stopped falling.
when it was only the heat that was around anymore,
when downstream and waterfall were only pipe dreams and folktales.
the water I drank was not blue,
because it was unfathomable that there might be distance
between me and the lifeblood we bottled from a spring.
when it kept me alive, I dared call it florescence,
a blossoming born from water,
a green season where I bloomed and grew.
I feared a summer, though, when the water might
slip from my hands and dry from the well in my
body, taken by the flame and fire, breath clouded in
smoke and ash as winter disappeared,
glaciers melting into puddles as the water rose
but I could not drink.
Reflection
Water has always been one of those deceivingly simple-sounding concepts. It’s a harsh reminder to remember that it is the very lifeblood that keeps us moving, and how truly miraculous it is that we happen to be drinking this water day in and day out. Water above all else is one of those requirements that ties us together as people, one of those delicate spider-string moments of humanity. After reading an excerpt from Solnit's "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" on the “blue of distance,” I knew I wanted to play with the idea of water being an intimately familiar subject, clear like the water I am lucky enough to drink every day, but also unknown, like the blue depths of a still vast and unexplored ocean. Further inspired by Dargan's "Dear Echo," I wanted to express urgency but not hopelessness, because human resilience has always been a cause for hope. The largest influence on my poem was the water cycle itself, which is what I first thought about when I considered where my water comes from. At first, I didn’t quite understand how climate change could be causing both more rain and drought through the water cycle. It turns out, as temperatures rise, the warmer air can hold more water vapor, which can lead to more intense rain, resulting in issues such as extreme flooding. At the same time, evaporation increases and the soil dries out from the higher temperatures. Even when the rain does come, most of the water runs off the hard ground into rivers and streams while the soil remains dry. The water never really stays enough to rehydrate the earth. From this, I did my best to include elements of the water cycle in my poem: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, but also further alluding to the heavier rainstorms, the increasing drought, and that simmering awe and fear of what water is—miraculous and life-giving, but also drowning and flooding. I hold out hope though, that we, as a collective humanity, can still change, and I will continue to do my own part to make that change happen, such as through writing.