You call Earth your mother,
but you neglect the fact that there would be no you without me.
I am your life force. I am your mother.
I am a vast expanse of life, which I simultaneously contain.
You spill your secrets to me. You worship me.
You find life in me and complete your life immersing yourself in my embrace.
You imbue me with your love and your life.
And then you kill me.
You fill me with your trash, pollute me with your dyes and oils,
and give no regard to my other children—every one of them equally dear to me as you.
You call yourselves the favorite child despite being the most naive ones.
You are ignorant children, but ignorance is by no means permanent,
a lesson I have learned over 4.6 billion years of life.
I rise and fall with the tides.
I swell and shrink.
I carry your lost secrets and sustain entire ecosystems.
Flies skim my surface.
Mussels and crayfish lurk under rocks, seeking refuge in me.
I have a home for everybody.
You might debate this.
You might say I don’t give you a home.
Naive.
Think of where your first cities arose.
Think of where civilizations were birthed.
Think—I implore you to think.
Not everything is about you humans,
though you love to make it so.
You seep into the fabric of what is mine.
You make yourselves known everywhere.
My banks are lined with your discards, and my surface gleams with your oils.
Every algae-covered piece of trash,
every water bottle, every chunk of Styrofoam is a dagger in me.
You hurt your mother, but I am forgiving.
I love you still. I will always love you, my foolish child.
You twist the knife and pour salt into the wound.
I’ve always had a personality and energy of my own.
But I take on the joy, the sorrow, and the secrets of others too.
I carry them on my back—weightless and heavy.
Light and dark. Big and small.
I will keep carrying
because it’s a joy like this that makes all the pain worth it.
I don’t need you to survive.
Sometimes, my well-being would be better if you weren’t here.
But I love you all the same,
and I will until the end of time.
I have seen it all, and I will see it all again.
But I remember all of you.
You stab me and twist the knife.
But then you staunch and bandage the bleeding.
I see children walking the beach, picking up trash.
I see animals being cared for by you.
I see you enjoying being with me.
I am still bleeding,
but I know you have the power to stitch me back up and heal the wounds.
But scars will last forever.

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