dying unnoticed

By Fatima Asif

This is a poem about environmental justice that adopts the voice of the Earth or Mother Nature and aims to bring awareness to how our actions can have a negative impact on our climate.

I know you hear the whispers of the ocean
Yet you turn the other way, revealing no emotion
How could you ignore my constant cries?
It seems you have no care if the world lives or dies

I can feel my body heating up
You are the stove, and I am the cup
I am burning and boiling, begging you to stop
You decide to burn your fire brighter as others just eavesdrop

For years you have been ungrateful
Destroying nature and never once feeling shameful
Fertilized the ground with plastic you have thrown
Do you still wish for the flowers to be grown?
Every breath they take is full of pollution
If you wish to admire their beauty, then find a solution

But I still feel you cutting up the trees
Am I just a stranger that no one sees?
Maybe if you felt my hurricane breeze
Or the changes in degrees
Will you finally decide to bring me to ease?

Process

I am an advocate and an activist for environmental justice. I have always been passionate about educating others about climate change. That is why I have participated in many extracurricular activities, such as volunteer work to learn and teach hundreds of people about our environment and the actions we can take to combat climate change. Living in New York City has heavily impacted my journey in climate advocacy because I have witnessed these issues firsthand. I have experienced drastic changes in temperatures daily. For example, there have been days when I have gone to the beach and then the next day, it has snowed. I have also witnessed natural disasters take place around the world, from wildfires in California to hurricanes in Mexico.

After volunteering with the Wildlife Conservation Society and attending Climate Protests in New York City, I have learned about environmental issues. Therefore, after joining the Girls Write Now Industry Workshop with Twitter on this topic, I decided that for my submission piece, I would write a poem that would bring awareness to how people are harming the environment and their communities. Witnessing the Earth’s chaos firsthand, I decided to title this poem “Dying Unnoticed” because although climate change is destroying our planet and ecosystems, many people turn a blind eye. I wanted this poem to beseech people to care for environmental justice.

Additionally, many people still believe that climate change is not real even though there are numerous pieces of scientific evidence that it is occurring and that our actions impact our environment. Greenhouse gases and pollution caused by people are destroying the Earth’s atmosphere and causing it to heat up. Although people are aware that this is occurring, they continue to aggravate the problem. People are the cause of littering and pollution, which are all things that harm the environment and all of its species. People expect the Earth to remain beautiful even though they are actively destroying and neglecting it. Therefore, climate change is occurring, which causes natural disasters like hurricanes and rapid changes in temperature. The ultimate goal of my poem is to shed light on how people have been impacting the Earth and that environmental justice is an important issue that everyone should advocate for.