I had always loved the ocean when I was younger. The smell of salt, and the feel of cold water still sticks with me from when I was five. I would sit right at the water's edge, on my rock, and take off my small coral ballet shoes and place them inside the scallop shell my daddy and I had found together while swimming, and let the cold morning water and white bubbles tickle my small toes.
I'd sit there for hours just watching the calm water, the sun to come up and tickle the water until waves bubbled up to the shore.
In the evenings, after dinner, I would always jump into my black rubber boots and pull my mommy down to the shore and i'd pick up small pieces of trash in my princess pink tutu. Then Mum and I would sit on my rock and watch crabs scurry around on the sand. My mum always said they were getting ready to have a midnight dance with their friends.
We would always wait for the sun to go down, every night.
Then it all stopped.
My father stopped letting me go down to the shore. My mum said that there was too much trash. The first month they did this I always threw a giant meltdown. Later I would just ask once a week, but when they kept saying no, I would quietly sob on the couch. After a while, I picked up drawing. I would take out my crayons and draw the crabs and their midnight dance, the moon being a spot light on the best dancers. I would sometimes take out my water colours and paint the sunrises Daddy and I always watched, and add in leaping dolphins. With pencil crayons I drew sandy white beaches with turtles sleeping on the rocks.
It was beautiful, what I drew.
But reality was frightful. Revolting.
The seas were only islands of trash. Water was black as the feathers of the dead penguins that littered the Antarctic's shores. People moved inland to get away from seas instead of wishing they could have it as their morning views.
I am now 14 and my art sells like it's a life line. People want the dream ocean. They want the animals of the past to swim the waters. What is left is what they did to themselves. I will admit I have a part in this - we all do - but I had always had tried to fix it again.
I wish I could say I tried to stop people before it was too late, but if I speak the truth, we all had our parts.
If I had one wish, it would be to save the world from humans.
YOU ARE READING
#PlanetOrPlastic
General Fiction#Plastic or planet. I focused on a girl named Emma who lives near the ocean and it's been with her for most of her younger life, and how she stopped seeing it because it was turning into something ugly.
