I remember as a kid, I used to love lovebugs. My parents would curse them because they’d cover the car in guts, but I found it to be the car’s fault. Lovebugs were just trying to live and mate. I used to play with them all day during their season, trapping them in my hands. Sometimes I’d shake them like maracas, peeking to make sure they were still alive.
My parents called it cute. But they didn’t see that I had accidentally suffocated them. They didn’t see the broken legs or bug guts staining my hands. Then I’d go try again because I wanted them as pets.
The truth is that it wasn’t cute at all. I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself. It was selfish and irresponsible. I’d feel terrible when they died, but I’d shake them off and just do it again. I wasn’t trying to kill them, but I also wasn’t trying to think of how they felt. I just pretended like I was.
My parents said I loved too much, but did I? Did I love them at all? It didn’t matter to me, all I had to do was wipe them off. There was no blood on my hands. I didn’t have to bury the bodies.
I used to release red balloons into the sky after storms because I thought of thunder as the sky coughing. I’d watch the sky swallow them whole like red cherry cough drops, and I thought I had done a good thing.
In reality, I had probably killed animals that way. They most likely choked on it. Those plastic balloons will never degrade; they’re just there forever, and I can’t shake them off like lovebug carcasses. The earth wasn’t coughing; it’s dying.
It’s dying because of you and me and all the plastic balloons released into the sky and all the things we disguise as love. I didn’t love those lovebugs. I just didn’t want to feel lonely.
The truth is that it doesn’t really matter anymore. We can’t singularly save the world, no matter how many cough drops we give it or how much we want to love it.
The only way the Earth will be okay again is when it eats humans the same way it gave birth to them. It’s our beginning and our end, and in a million years it will be like we never existed.
