creative writing on environmental justice
Ben and Theo found Eliška’s name funny at first. “Delicious Elisshhhhhka” Ben sang, with a pop diva-style vibrato, using a lightbulb as a microphone. His brother laughed. Eliška did too.
For a while after that, the boys called her Deli. But their mother, Mrs Trevalyn, told them not to. She said the name was undignified. “Our maid is not to be treated as a pet.”
Eliška . . .
On the day my son is born, a summer thunderstorm stomps and slashes through San Diego. Pellets of hail hit the window four floors up as I lie in my hospital bed and hold my squirming pink infant.
My husband checks the radar on his phone, making little comments to himself about unprecedented weather patterns and hook formations. Our son’s face is a red, squishy orb, . . .
Thank you for your straightforward, if curt, query in response to my previous email. I don’t believe your incredulous tone was appropriate, but I understand we’ve all been under a lot of pressure.
My mom once called me a “hopeless lover of lost causes” (I think she intended it to embarrass me) but I’ve basically made a career of my hopeless obsessions. To answer . . .
From space, the planet appeared blue-green and lonely. The Manithan decelerated through re-entry, exchanging speed for heat. I remained stretched in my pressure suit, suffering the shudders. Rajini lay beside me, emitting a series of blinks on the panel across his chest that reassured me the insulation cloaking our chamber was sufficient to withstand the . . .
We are not doing anything about it because we have to help our parents pay their mortgage. We are not doing anything about it because the children want dogs to play with. We are not doing anything about it because I cannot stop thinking about a girl I sat and watched at a coffee shop six subway stops away. We are not doing anything because who believes that stuff anyway? . . .
Along the shoreline, the mineral trees have risen from the sea like jeweled hands reaching for the sky. Further out, long branches of coral have joined above the waves, spiraling together into bright red and blue and green—fingers crossed for some imagined future.
Today is the day the world will come. From the window, she can see the media unloading cameras, . . .
海岸線では、鉱物の樹がまるで宝石をちりばめた手のように海から立ち上がり、空に向
かって伸びている。さらにその先では、珊瑚の長い枝が波の上で繋がり、鮮やかな赤や青や
緑に螺旋を描いている。
今日は世界がやってくる日だ。窓から見えるのは、カメラを降ろして取材場所を決めな
がら、彼女の到着を待つ報道陣の姿だ。
漁師たちの船が樹の周りに集まり、網やかごを海に投げ入れるのを見ながら、準備をす
る彼女の隣には夫が立っている。わずか3年前、この海にはかつて地域経済を支えた魚や牡
蠣がいなくなり、生態系は崩壊寸前だった。しかし、彼女が開発した塩水電解法と生物工学
に基づくサンゴ礁の建設は、その状況を一変させた。波の下のどこかで、鉄筋や金網のミネ . . .
White wave heads were making a line that stretched northward parallel to the coastline. A gentle sea breeze changed to an updraft on the sunshine-warmed land and pushed an osprey’s wings up softly. The osprey rose higher and higher into the sky in wide circles. The bird felt the heat on its back. It was not uncomfortable. Its feathers held the warmed air, and it . . .
1. Following the conventional naming system created by the Court of the Five Silver Moons.
2. Estimates derived from a survey of original documents and scholarly papers. The claim of 77,777 watermaidens by the Ambassador of the Court of the Indigo Sun, frequently cited by later scholars, may be safely dismissed as propaganda intended to convince Court members . . .
The mangroves inhale her, a buzzing, air-thick, knotted world. She has seen eighty-one years of their change—
Eighty-two? Perhaps eighty. The decades, like the roots, tangle themselves together, extend into murky depths. In her best sturdy shoes, Sik pads as quickly as she can over the silt. Her soles squelch in the softened edges. Brackish water laps at her . . .