Waves (#PlanetorPlastic)

Waves

As a child I lived on the beach. To me every day was made for swimming, and I would pretend that the waves would obey my commands. Rise, I announced; the waves obeyed, swarming my feet with warm water. Fall, I would say; the waves surrendered, pulling forgotten shells from the sand. My childhood was filled a singular thought; that pushing and pulling the waves was my responsibility to hold.

In my youth I lived near the beach. Studying and homework was my new reality. Miscellaneous plastic wrappers, coated with an exuberance of chocolate and salt, littered my pockets. Instead of walking to that trash can, just too far away, I let each item fall out; one by one. The salty wind picked every piece that I discarded, as if to cover my wrongdoings. Peripheral vision showed my trash dropping on the beach, near the beer cans I left behind last weekend. Rise, I said; the waves did my bidding, rescuing my rubbish from between the rocks it fell into. Fall, I said; the waves complied with my request, drowning the plastic and metal from sight. My youth was filled with a singular hope; that the waves would cover my negligence.

When reaching adulthood, I lived on the coast. Busy with too many emails and unnecessary phone calls, it was easy to buy something prepackaged. I was always too tired when I awoke to make myself breakfast. Too tired when I finally got my break to go out to a restaurant to eat. Too tired to make myself dinner when I returned home. The plastic from sandwiches, straws and plastic forks were so easy to dump into the trash. It was so easy to ignore the news when trucks filled with the plastic I used, were dumping everything into rivers that fed to the ocean. It was so easy to ignore the strangled fish when I went to the beach. It was so easy for me to pretend to care. Rise, I chanted along with thousands of others; the waves conformed, gentling showing the world the starved corpses of birds and turtles. Fall, I cried in union with society; the waves acted upon our desire, dragging hundreds of other toxins into the ocean's depths. My adulthood was filled with ignorant demands for justice; discounting my own guilt and blaming others, at the expense of the waves.

Till my death I lived by the ocean. Retirement made it easy to spend time with my grandchildren. Smiling, I retold my childhood antics on the beach. After hearing my stories, they wanted to play in the sand like I used to, and so I took them. It wasn't until they were building sandcastles, that I noticed how dirty it was. This wasn't the beach I once knew, what would my grandchildren think? Rise, I called out in panic; as the waves weakly swelled, more trash rose. Fall, I wailed; the waves did, re-releasing my youthful mistakes.

But the waves could do no more.