If Mother Nature Were in High School
Windsor, CA
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
If Mother Nature were in high school she would listen to My Chemical Romance and dress in
only black
She would wear heeled boots as tall as the skyscrapers stabbing at her neck and step on the toes
of any who gets in her way
If Mother Nature were in high school she would never talk in class
she would sit in the back row wearing her dad’s plastic headphones from the nineties that she
found in their garage
and the only time she would speak would be to tell us that we’re just, like, so lame
as we go out into the forests and destroy her greatest trees
If Mother Nature were in high school she would be into the softcore drug scene
She would drive into a symphony of engine hums and turn off her car and choke on smoke
getting high off of the carbon dioxide we pump into her lungs
If Mother Nature were in high school she would have dreams about boiling the oceans to steam
her prom dress and using the oil we left behind to paint her nails black when she gets stood up
But when she wakes up she would realize that she’s only in high school
So Mother Nature would spin the lock of her door against her parents’ shouts and spin another
hurricane alive
Mother Nature would burn her ex boyfriend’s love letters and ignite a wildfire
Mother Nature would suffocate as gas fills her lungs and wonders why
when our air becomes thick with smoke as well and we can barely breathe
we tell Mother Nature that the suffocation is probably all in her head
If Mother Nature were in high school she would make a hundred tiny cuts on her wrists and
crown herself the queen of thorns and watch as we kill her most beautiful roses
Reflection
Reflection
I wrote this poem to bring awareness to the severity of climate change, in response to the nature that many people have regarding climate change. In the same way that many of my friends in high school who are experiencing trauma and self-harm are dismissed as “asking for attention,” climate change is often denied by politicians and news agencies and dismissed as a cry for attention from environmental activists. This poem aims to raise awareness about this issue.