Command Q

by JESSICA MILES

I went without plastic straws for six months, once.

I didn’t use plastic water bottles for years. After Flint, I worried about what was in my drinking water. In college, I went meatless for a whole year. I became anemic. In graduate school, I went to farmers markets and tried cooking meals from scratch. I became fat and anemic. Now I use plastic, drive my car, fly on planes, and buy industrial meat. I am a horrible person for killing the environment. Fuck the environment. I am a horrible person for thinking “fuck the environment.” I hate that I care. I despise myself for being unable to move on. Stop.

I am writing a persuasive environmental essay. As President, Trump reversed, revoked, or rolled back over one hundred environmental rules. Over four years, Trump doggedly weakened rules on limiting power plant emissions and vehicle emission standards, removed protections for half of the nation’s wetlands, allowed power plants to emit mercury, and championed opening up land for oil and gas leasing, among other things. Cumulatively, his administration’s efforts potentially will add 1.8 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere by 2035. In a country where diametrically opposed demagogues are elected every four years, idealist notions of reversing the damage are hampered by obstinate politicians. When we only have a handful of years to prevent ourselves from heading over the proverbial cliff face, progress is vital. Instead, we spent four years listening to a man gaslight us about the problem and then tell us to rake the forest. What is wrong with us? Stop.

I am writing an opinionated nature essay. Opening environmental news stories is like being operated on. I lie conscious and immobile on the table, unable to think of anything but the pain.

How do I write about the environment? Give me a story on climate protests. I’ll give you my arm: slice through the biceps brachii and brachialis muscles like a hot knife through chicken flesh; saw through my humerus bone until it snaps under the pressure, a wishbone in your hands; exit through the triceps brachii and suture my skin back together. Tell Dr. Sawbones that I don’t need an anesthetic. Whisper your frustration, your anger, your hate. Whisper the sins of inaction into my palm. Speak so that your pain becomes my pain, and your words are embedded in my fingerprint. Curl my fingers into a tight fist one at a time. Press them hard into my palm, until nails tear into flesh and lava leaks from my veins.

My arm will be your weapon, my fist your sigil. My fist will lead the charge as you occupy the Capitol. Thump, thump, thump. I pound the halls and doors in time with your protest chants. Harried staffers and interns shelter in place while Representatives gab in the Cloakroom. Thump, thump, thump. The sound is mistaken for the House Speaker’s gavel, our chants for the chatter of colleagues.

Show me a video of an emaciated polar bear dying of starvation. I’ll give you my eyes: scoop each eyeball with a spoon, snip the optic nerves with scissors, severing it from the skull; preserve the optic nerves. Place my eyes in a glasses case. Carry them in your backpack when you travel the world. Let me witness the bats dying from white-nose syndrome, the frogs infected with the Bd fungus, and hundred-year-old ash trees felled by the emerald ash borer. Let me glimpse the 1.2 million identified species in the world. The human eye has 106 million photoreceptors; I will store the images in the pouch between the white of my eye and my conjunctiva for safekeeping.

Give me a story about the melting Arctic. Stuff it down my throat until I choke. I’ll give you my lungs: perform an extrapleural pneumonectomy by making a six- to eight-inch incision under my shoulder blade and between my ribs and remove my sixth rib. Then pull out my pleura, lungs, and part of my diaphragm; staple the wound closed. My lungs are CamelBaks holding an estuary of salty tears and glacial ice melt. Use the water to douse the Australian bushfires.

Show me how the environment can be saved. I’ll give you my heart: it suffers from cardiomegaly and is ill-fitting in my chest. My ribs bear micro-fractures, commendation medals from the war to contain it. Eat the bleeding organ raw and whole, and your future child will lead us out of the environmental quagmire.

I am the Giving Tree, with the words “I TRIED” carved into my torso. The path forward is well-trodden, inescapable, and terminal.

Feed my swollen amygdala and eviscerated hippocampus to your pet Industrialists as their last meal.

Leave my tongue: a desiccated, useless piece of flesh.