creative writing on environmental justice
Across the flat horizon: only blue, no sign of other boats, of anything at all.
“Row row your boat, row—”
“Come on.”
“—this goddamn thing.”
The line and anchor had become entangled with something below.
“Pull like this,” Oliver said.
“Nope,” his father said. “Tricksy widget. Snake charmer. Battle slug.”
“Drink much?”
His father yanked back and forth on the line . . .
“Our water!”
“OUR WATER!”
“Our life!”
“OUR LIFE!”
“Our water!”
“OUR WATER!”
“Our life!”
“OUR LIFE!”
Neon poster boards glowed pink and yellow in the late August sun, like opalescent scales rippling on a monster made of myriad bodies. Each sign bore a slogan, praise for the lake or a condemnation of the corporate befouler, Lennox-Mills; and the protestors shook . . .
“David.” I roll his name around in my mouth like it is a prayer. David Malouf. He laughs when I use his family name. It means nothing now. But I like it. I like how when I use it, I remember.
In some ways, it would be easier to forget. And then, we’d be back at the beginning of time, just the two of us, as if none of it had happened. Just bodies. No past, no future.
David Malouf. . . .
Not man in a metal hat aboard a floating city, not carpetbagger walking jauntily from the train. All colonies begin, after all, in the mind: longing for that hub, the warm fire of London, Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Rome, Jerusalem. Only there can the gravity of this life achieve its divinity; there, past the horizon, wisdom is won on streets of gold.
Next to this mental . . .
“I try to put myself in people. See them, at least. I think it helps. Even though I can’t remember her, I see vines of wisteria and grape, and when they get mixed in with the few other things I know about her, I get a pretty clear picture of my grandma.
“I imagine that last little pat on the ground when she finished planting them. How she straightened up, supported her . . .
Tourists blocked the entrance to the caves. I’d known they would come, eventually. You can’t keep a thing like this silent in the information age. Downdee, population 1,320, home of the Singing Caves™.
They were told ghosts of mermaids and embraced that tale. Course we of Downdee know the truth: mermaids are horrible singers. No, it’s the caves themselves . . .
Atiador,
I hope you read this. I know we did not part well. Prexim says that your lungs are bad enough to confine you to the arboretum. I hope you’re not climbing the walls like a penned animal. I suspect it is a vain hope, but it’s my hope all the same.
Is it true that you finally managed to get one of the lacrimosia to take? You devil. I’d give my right arm to know how you . . .
The first time your worlds crossed paths you felt your fate short-circuiting. It had been a whetstone-dull day, and you had stopped counting the dull days. They bled into each other; you never knew when to make a hatchmark on the wall. But the air was thick with meaningless perfume-smog and you stopped to examine something on the ground.
A bumblebee without its . . .