Published by Intersectional Environmentalist (2022)
TW: ED
dear girl, have you eaten
enough today?
don’t you know
there are starved nations in you,
rivers run dry, war zones,
forests, burnt and broken?
what crumbles will you accept
and call yourself full?
dear girl, dear
ocean, you have turned
to acid, swarming
with ghost armies of
jellyfish, gelatin, jell-O -
you’d suck on a lemon and
let the corals inside you
bleach themselves white.
in their excavation they have
gutted your mountains concave,
torn you apart with drills and
explosions, carved you open,
a quarry of meat and bones,
digging to unearth the fossil of
what you used to be.
dear girl, dear garden, what if you grew
as if you would not be harvested?
earthen creature, remember you are rooted -
still.
Turn towards that speckled sunlight
as if it was what you were made for.
as if you were already enough.