Reflection

Reflection

I've been addicted to nature documentaries and recordings since I exited the womb, so this was just another excuse to be lulled by David Attenborough's voice as I watched squid frolic on screen. Just as I suspected, it provided all of the inspiration I needed. Sprawled haphazardly on my couch late at night with the deep blue sea taunting me, I scrambled to the rhythm of clacking keys on a laptop while trying to record the workings of my brain. My purpose for writing this piece, however, extends far beyond a slightly irrational reverence of marine photography. I grew up on the tiny island of Guam completely surrounded by water, so I have loved the ocean for as long as I've been alive. I have hated what we, as a collective civilization, are doing to it ever since that one day when I was five years old and piles of dead fish washed ashore from waters that grew too hot for them. This is my open love letter, a literary representation of my lifelong devotion, to the sea. I do not hold the power of politicians or billionaires or celebrities in my clenched sixteen-year-old fists, but I do possess the power of my words. And I intend to use them.