Mary Collins, What can you do for the earth

What can you do for the earth

Mary Collins

and, after all, what can the earth do for you? Remember every time it’s let you down— every spring that bloomed with rotten oranges, every winter that made you a rat in an icebox. Will this world ever be tender? Wash the sheets on Friday, remember your favorite color? Cook vegan frittatas when you’re feeling low?

There have been so many months, so many old tote bags, cloth napkins, reusable containers, organic tampons. Fruitless petitions rotting in the compost bin. You started buying all your spices in bulk and forgot to label them. You resent this, so you keep sweeping dirt off the back porch, telling the earth where it ends and you begin.

Most of your comforts do not come from blue-capped mountain tops or spinning green rivers. It is pleasant on a hot summer day to step into an air-conditioned room; pleasant to wipe a kitchen counter with a paper towel and throw it in the trash. There are wolves in the forest, snakes in the ocean,

and spiders in the yard.

The earth probably doesn’t think much of you anyway. What is one mouth to feed compared to a whole river bleeding dry? You are not a river. You ebb more than you flow. You do not know if you can clean the sea or heal the sky.

You do not know much beyond four walls and a roof above your head. For the earth, all you can promise is that you will die the way you lived. Your last breath will steal and your last bone will give.

Trash Triptych

Emily Broad