Reflection

Reflection

I was most inspired by the idea of invisibility, especially concerning how the degradation of marine ecosystems can so often happen in plain sight. In this respect, defaulting on the idea of future potentialities can be incredibly damaging. The truth of the matter is, the sort of nightmarish, apocalyptic realities that many of us attribute to the future are already real, pressing issues in the present. While there is nothing wrong with rallying around a viral picture or a passing trend, awareness is something that should be constant and urgent in the same way that climate change, extinction, ocean acidification, and plastic pollution are constant and urgent. Thus, the symbol of the bake-kurija—an animal that revisits humanity as a skeletal apparition—takes on particular importance. Visually, this poem evokes the shape of a vertebrae. It is my hope that the reader should view it as something that holds both an elegy to the past and a warning for the future within its ribs.