Reflections
Sugar Land, TX
2021, Senior, Creative Writing
Mirror, Mirror.
The voice penetrates the layers of water, reaching down with the rosy fingers of early morning light to pull me from my sleep. The face that peers down from the banks appears distorted through the rippling currents of the stream, undulating in a mirage of broken color.
Who is the fairest one of all?
That is the question you ask.
Like Narcissus, peering over the water’s edge, you have become enamored with your own reflection.
But what should happen if, as you stare into the waters, you see my face peering back at you. A naiad, spirit of the water, plastic in my hair and oil smearing my cheeks, poisoned by chemicals, and drowning in the saltwater that seeps from melting arctic glaciers into the freshwater we all so desperately need.
Would you listen to my reflections as I die?
Reflected in the waters into which it falls, Antarctica. Where once was Snow White, she flees and the snow bleeds, the red pigment of algae seeping across the white as warmth pierces Antarctica. This ice reflects not your beauty, yielding only surface reflectivity reduction increasing solar radiation absorption as the humming blues and greys of Snow White melt away to green. Three trillion tons of ice, stolen by heated currents and lost to sea (Levin).
Reflected in the waters which they lost, Australia. Where once were boundaries carved by winding water through landscape, the Aboriginal people long ago lost ancestral lands to European colonization and land dispossession. Farming rooted in the land, irrigation flowing through it, to strip away the land was to strip away the water is to strip away the rights returned today only in miniscule entitlements and a fraction of a percent of available surface water in payment for the centuries of indigenous homeland fractured. Denied water rights, the driest inhabited continent became 17.2 percent drier for Aboriginal populations from 2009 to 2018 (Hamilton and Kells).
Reflected in poisoned waters, broken into distorted ripples by bobbing plastic, Asia. Hands scoop up algae, pesticides, bacteria, and waste, brought to lips and swallowed in promises of water to quench thirst. Cities swell, brick by brick, person by person, pressed against the river’s edge, the fringes of their lives crumbling into the waters, food wrappers, plastic containers, sewage. Seventy percent of Mongolians, 73 percent of Afghans, 80 percent of Indonesians, bend to drink from underground water sources polluted by mining and rapid urbanization, have lost water infrastructure to war, drink from rivers whose sanitation is discarded by corporations alongside the government pollution laws designed to protect them (Pirhalla).
Reflected in distanced waters, approached by bare and leathered feet, Africa. Women and children walk, six kilometers, 30 minutes for 20 liters of water, carry 44 pounds, often balanced on heads, compressing neck and spine (Reid). For many, the walk to water, day after day, hour after hour, is the walk away from education, away from a job, and into the silence. They are the caretakers of the millions of ill children suffering from water-related illnesses, leaders of water and sanitation in their households, but silenced voices in the implementation of such systems in the world, under-represented in a sector where their presence has been proven to provide greater successes (Water for the Ages).
Reflected in isolated waters, the bridge from drought to rain rendered in profitability, Europe. Water is a translucent resource, denied transparency as corporations are held accountable to neither environment nor people, but stockholders. Instead of dispensing water, taps draw on money. Privatize the resource and the water flows where the money is, denying low-income communities one of their basic rights, necessary to survive, unnecessary to commercialize (Food & Water Watch).
Reflected in water that tumbles from pump and sloshes in bucket drawn from well, South America. Purification tablet, well, and water pump provide points of relief in areas devoid of the infrastructure that carries water, but rights are not meant to dot landscapes. When poverty leads to poor pipage and sanitation systems, to environmental pollution, when rural communities are shunned in water access for urban areas, communities find themselves balanced on economic and geographic inequalities, inequalities that must be slayed should human rights be truly recognized (Prashad).
Reflected in waters running past hazardous waste facility, mining project, Indigenous territory, North America. Contamination of soil and water, toxic pollution, laws, policies, and institutions exposing communities to environmental hazards, all of that with which low-income families and people of color are faced with. Recognize the name, “environmental racism,” named by Benjamin Chavis in calling for its recognition, and eradication (Moses and Excell).
Who is the fairest of them all?
Shall our stories align with that of Narcissus where we might pine away in our own self-obsession, better named self-destruction, left to only the remnants of our beauty, echoing through the continents?
Or shall we deign that it is not the fairest individual of them all, but the fairness in us all deigned equal by achievement of universal human rights with things seemingly so simple as a tap that runs clean water.
Or shall we act. Look to the silver glint of solar panels that reflect the opportunities, sky high, for renewable energy, energy that we conserve and prize. Turn off the tap while we brush our teeth so that others can turn on the tap to get clean water to drink (Denchak). Reduce carbon emissions to combat global warming, fending off the thief that is stealing arctic ice-burgs and sending sea levels rising, flooding and contaminating our freshwater resources (Lindsey). We must reduce our use of plastics, increase our knowledge of the sacrifices made each year, each month, each day, whether it be corporations cutting corners, poisoning minorities and the impoverished, or women walking kilometers to quench their thirst for water at the expense of their thirst for knowledge, and speak up, take action because it is only you that can change my reflections.
Reflection
Reflection
Naiads were the water spirits of Greek mythology and were often seen as lighthearted and happy creatures. However, when I sat down to write this piece, I had the feeling that the naiads that the ancient Greeks knew are not the same naiads that we know today. As I researched, I was disturbed, but, unfortunately, not shocked, to find out just how right I was. Water is a resource that is tortured and mistreated across the globe, and, more often than not, the impact of this falls on those marginalized groups, constantly pushing them to the fringes of society. What I want the readers of my work to realize is that we are one. We are the perpetrators of pollution and marginalization and racism; not a single continent is devoid of water struggles, but we are also the ones who can change this. Therefore, I go out into the world after researching for and writing this piece knowing that I have educated myself on the problems of the world, and now I must speak out against it, conserve and respect water, contribute to offering it to others whenever possible. Above all, I am not alone in this fight for environmental justice, human justice.