Climate change effects our whole planet. On the news we see the melting of the ice caps or the fires in Australia, but the impacts of global warming can be seen even throughout a city.

is the line that connects us to those who came before

it’s a string that snaps the scissors that dare to cut it in two

it’s the shared air we breathe that connects me to you

we are born onto inhabited land

a divided land, divided city, by red ink, concrete, and brown river water

only having our body, our voice, our bone, and breath to call our own.

The breath of our ancestors once clean

familiar yet foreign, flowing through our lungs, clearing our head 

the air that makes the trees dance in an adagio

the wind that freckles the sidewalk with loose leaves 

the wind I no longer know

New York City, the city of boundless opportunity 

only bounded by the borough

By the neighborhood

that has inhaled the air of what it is to be good

but deserves to breathe what it is to be great

deserves the color of their coughed up spit to no longer match the lines that divide us,

deserves an air uncontaminated, 

deserves a community no longer treated as a backdrop, 

as a junkyard,

as a factory warehouse, 

as a balloon filled with the exhaust of a delivery truck 

No longer a neighborhood dwindled, asthmatic, left empty handed 

with just the promise of fresh air and green canopied corners  

Process

Over the Summer I was garden volunteering in different boroughs across NYC and have noticed a clear divide on how certain areas are affected by our climate crisis compared to others. Our city is already overall being heavily impacted by global warming which can be seen in the “urban heat island effect”, rise in our sea levels, and the poorer air quality. The usual news headlines comment on how climate change is drastically affecting areas across the ocean or the other side of the globe, but I realized that it’s lesser known to the wider public that certain communities are experiencing dire environmental conditions. Whether it be due to their close proximity to industrial facilities, highways, toxic waste, and less green spaces, it´s becomes clear that this issue is deep rooted into the foundation of our city. The way our city is built up and divided demonstrates a disproportionate amount of marginalized communities becoming exposed to environmental hazards. Revealing existing discrimination in policy making and infrastructure that needs to change. My poem is a response to this realization.