Dear Smoke
Los Altos, CA
2024, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
You make the sky bleed orange instead,
strangle the clouds till they’re tinged red,
till nature itself is singed and dead.
You stick in my nose and throat like a petulant child,
settle into my skin like nettles,
malevolent and wild.
And it’s only going to get worse
as the effects of climate change disperse.
You put my patience and graciousness on trial,
your weightless shamelessness awakens us
while still pinning us in our beds, smothered in a blanket of dread
because we can’t breathe.
Exhalation is inherently relief,
a sigh is the formation of the belief that we are alive.
And to breathe out, you must draw in a breath,
paint air upon your tongue,
color within the lines of your lungs.
Some days, my hair doesn’t smell like shampoo,
instead it reeks of you,
and I stare at a pair of scissors,
wondering if losing my locks will unlock my ability to gasp in quality air,
if such drastic action will free me from your spiral-inducing snare.
The worst part of the suffocation is that for the duration of your invasion,
you destroy the foundation of relaxation.
I can’t breathe a sigh of relief because I can’t breathe.
Please.
We can’t breathe.
Reflection
I have lived my whole life in California, where fire season brings dangerously poor air quality every year. I’ve had school canceled because of unbreathable air, watched the sky turn completely orange from pollution, and seen asthma attacks triggered from smoke. As climate change worsens, I know that fire seasons will only get worse and worse. Global warming has already led to a 172% increase in burned areas since 1971 according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. Although I understood the impact of wildfire smoke on my community, the research I did for this topic showed me just how large in scope this issue truly is. I learned that, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, air pollution contributes to 6.5 million deaths annually. Poetry has always been a way for me to express, process, and share my emotions and I hope that one day it will also become a way for me to inspire others. I ended the poem with a ‘we’, because air pollution affects everyone, and communities around the world must work together to fight climate change if we are to ever truly breathe sighs of relief again.