The Empty Hands #PlanetOrPlastic

brooke.

There is a dream of The Ocean.

The dream is a fantasy at the back of my head: built up of haphazard images and phrases, told to me by my mother. The Ocean makes sound, like the wind, but softer. The Ocean is blue, like the sky, but angrier. The Ocean has animals, like on land, but rarer. The animals are rare now- almost gone. In the midday heat I imagine sinking my legs into it, feeling the cold rush up -

"Brooke" Dawn says, whispering to me. "I saw a Fork yesterday."

She speaks quietly, her eyes searching around us for any eavesdroppers. My rake stops halfway submerged in the grey dirt.

"What?"

Dawn tells me about The Fork- a White, Thin Thing, that bent easily and almost snapped. Her Granddad had been angry. She had been angry with her Granddad. With my mind swimming in the midday heat, I listened to her argument about The Fork, frowning.

Why did they make them so flimsy?

"To throw them out"

But why? Why make something to be used only once?

"You don't have to wash them."

But didn't you have machines Granddad, that did washing for you? Didn't you have-

"It was okay to use them back then, they were cheap to make, cheap to buy. Alright? Enough."

Ah, we sigh. That word. Cheap.

Talking about The Old Days made young people sad and old people angry. At night, I thought the old people still had empty hands, at heart.

Cheap is the mantra of the empty hands. The empty hands are the ones that want. The empty hands dipped into The Ocean and decimated populations and still, they chanted:

n o t e n o u g h

The empty hands made the plastic and the empty hands made everything on earth and soon the population were all turned into empty hands, all wanting the newest of the new, the best- the most expensive made from the cheapest of the cheap. But still, it was

n o t e n o u g h

The empty hands had no-where to put their trash. The empty hands didn't want to dump it on land- life as it is, was n o t e n o u g h, how could life beside trash be fulfilling? They spied my wide open empty blue Ocean and threw it there.

The empty hands left us with empty hands. No animals in the Ocean. Poisoned water.

That night, in my dreams, I sink my legs down into my Ocean and I use my hands to try and grasp A Fish. But even here, in my mind, the empty hands haunt me. My hand is bitten by the prongs of a White Thin Fork.

The Ocean is overrun with them. I look around: not seeing angry sky blue, but white.

I am not sinking in water.

I am sinking in plastic.

The Ocean is truly empty now.

It has nothing else left to give.