I remember as a kid, I used to love lovebugs.\u00a0 My parents would curse them because they’d cover the car in guts, but I found it to be the car’s fault.\u00a0 Lovebugs were just trying to live and mate.\u00a0 I used to play with them all day during their season, trapping them in my hands.\u00a0 Sometimes I’d shake them like maracas, peeking to make sure they were still alive.<\/p>\n
My parents called it cute.\u00a0 But they didn’t see that I had accidentally suffocated them.\u00a0 They didn’t see the broken legs or bug guts staining my hands.\u00a0 Then I’d go try again because I wanted them as pets.<\/p>\n
The truth is that it wasn’t cute at all.\u00a0 I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself.\u00a0 It was selfish and irresponsible.\u00a0 I’d feel terrible when they died, but I’d shake them off and just do it again.\u00a0 I wasn’t trying to kill them, but I also wasn’t trying to think of how they felt.\u00a0 I just pretended like I was.<\/p>\n
My parents said I loved too much, but did I?\u00a0 Did I love them at all?\u00a0 It didn’t matter to me, all I had to do was wipe them off.\u00a0 There was no blood on my hands.\u00a0 I didn’t have to bury the bodies.<\/p>\n
I used to release red balloons into the sky after storms because I thought of thunder as the sky coughing.\u00a0 I’d watch the sky swallow them whole like red cherry cough drops, and I thought I had done a good thing.<\/p>\n
In reality, I had probably killed animals that way.\u00a0 They most likely choked on it.\u00a0 Those plastic balloons will never degrade; they’re just there forever, and I can’t shake them off like lovebug carcasses.\u00a0 The earth wasn’t coughing; it’s dying.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I didn’t love those lovebugs.\u00a0 I just didn’t want to feel lonely.<\/p>\n
The truth is that it doesn’t really matter anymore.\u00a0 We can’t singularly save the world, no matter how many cough drops we give it or how much we want to love it.<\/p>\n
The only way the Earth will be okay again is when it eats humans the same way it gave birth to them.\u00a0 It’s our beginning and our end, and in a million years it will be like we never existed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I remember as a kid, I used to love lovebugs.\u00a0 My parents would curse them because they’d cover the car in guts, but I found it to be the car’s fault.\u00a0 Lovebugs were just trying to live and mate.\u00a0 I used to play with them all day during their season, trapping them in my hands.\u00a0 … Continue reading “Earth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}