creative writing on environmental justice
Sunlight hits the top floor of One Eastwaters Tower in a hard, bright wave. When the afternoon glow also strikes the lake, everything turns to dazzle.
I’ve lived high-lakeside for three years. I still startle at the ripple of water-light on the floor, dappling my skin, sparking off the bits of my exoskel that are otherwise invisible no matter what I’m wearing. . . .
The wall looms outside Amanda’s window, its overlapping concrete segments curving into the distance like a vast serpent. It rises to the height of a four-story building and stretches to the north and south until it merges with the horizon. Three years ago when she first arrived at the refugee camp, before the water came, she couldn’t stop touching the wall. Nobody . . .
@antediluvian: london isn’t alive, zuri
@antediluvian: london is just a city. it can’t hurt you.
@ZRI_: yeah yeah i know
@ZRI_: just let me be delusional for a minute okay i’m having a Time over here
@antediluvian: can you get here? are the railways still up?
@ZRI_: lmao no
@ZRI_: power’s off and everything
@ZRI_: it’s whatever. it be like this sometimes
@antediluvian: . . .
Barren Island is the only place or locality in or near the city of New York for the destruction of garbage and dead animals in the city, and is the only proper place for the rendering of the same . . . .
—The New York Supplement, Volume 70 (New York State Reporter Vol. 104), containing the decisions of the Supreme and lower courts of record . . .
Uncle Jessie crushed Vivian into the snow. The coldness seeped under the flaps of her hunting jacket—at her wrists where her gloves didn’t meet her sleeves, at her back as her shirt rode up over her belt. Blood trickled over her lips from the cut left by Jessie’s pinky ring. Her vision was murky under his clouded breath.
She flailed, wrenched an arm free from . . .
It was the year the lake turned to glass. It was as though the water wasn’t even there, the shore simply extending further and further into a barren landscape. The lakes had been cleaned in recent years, some meager effort to beautify the city, but that made it all the worse. Every discarded bottle, every useless tire rolled into the surf, they petulantly stared . . .
Walking through the forest under the lights of the setting sun, I asked, “Is this all true?”
Pervu said, “Nobody here lies about the Sunset Hill, but the city-people rarely believe what we say, Sir.” The way he spoke made it clear that he didn’t have much respect for the city-people. An awkward silence fell as we walked, crushing the fallen yellow leaves under our . . .
Among her many names, the one that remains is Eater of Dirt. The rest have been cast off, but one name is enough to sustain her. The filth-goddess knows the flavor of fairy footsteps, the crumble of dead magic and the taste of tiny living jewels with wings that crunch in her teeth. Men may fling her holy name about as an insult, but they don’t know how sweet and savory . . .
Dog would eat anything. That was a comfort. If Martin had had to starve the poor bugger he might have thought twice about keeping quarantine, because the only other alternative was unacceptable. At some point, hunger would likely have pushed Dog to break his training and go for the kakapo, and the two of them had worked too hard on Resolution to see that happen. . . .
Worlds depart; their light endures.
Over five years before, I had arrived on the planet we call DA3(1), the Third Daughter of star Alkahran and the only life-bearing body in the system. As with most planets, this one had no specific name in the language of its natives: they called their sun the Sun, their world the World, and its inhabitants People. This world was . . .