I’m drowning. I’m submerged. I’m sinking.

Air is an unreachable star, glowing far, far away.

I am plunging deeper, and I cannot rise.

...

I have a very special talent. I can delve into the minds of any animal I wish to understand. Experience their sensations, breathe through their nostrils, see from their perspectives.

There are days when I wish to escape from the world of humans, when I settle into the consciousness of a galloping cheetah on the grasslands of Africa, or when I spread my wings in the body of a gull, gliding over the smooth blue, glass of the ocean, or when I howl up to the

moon in the shape of a wolf, my pack around me.

Isolated in the closed off walls of my room, I sit serenely in the center of my bed, my legs crossed, back straight, eyes shut as my mind wanders, leaping from one body to the next, from the eyes of an eagle soaring over the snow-capped Alps, to a lion cub nestling in its mother’s

lap, to a penguin, shooting through the ocean like a comet.

The ocean. My territory for today.

I leave the penguin’s body, move on to an orca whale, darting happily in between a forest of fishing lines with members of his family, a proceeding game of hide and seek.

A warning bell peals in my head as I see through the orca’s eyes, witnessing the draping threads that sway in the current. I try to control the whale’s body, but it’s too late. His fin tangles in a line and pain shoots through my arm in reality as the whale jerks, an attempt at freedom.

The game halts. His family gathers, worried wails penetrating the water as the whale I inhabit jerks again. My lungs are starting to ache. The whale is a mammal, and he needs to breathe. But with the thread of net tangled around his fin, he cannot move without hurting himself.

Time ticks. I try to force myself to move on, move, or this will undeniably kill me along with the orca, but I can’t. My lungs burn. I crave for air, for freedom. The wails of the orca’s family echo in my ears as I wrench my mind from his, my heart shattering in the process.

Now, I’m flapping peacefully through a kaleidoscope of reefs. Brightly painted branches stretch toward the glowing surface above. I’m a sea turtle coming up from the depths for a breath of cool air at the surface.

I kick upwards, and only then do I notice the plastic bags wrapped around my flippers, trailing in the water like gauzy veils. One catches on the sharp edge of a reef. I tug hard, but it doesn’t budge. I yank harder, but the sea turtle’s strength is limited. Its air is lessening with each second. I can feel the salty wetness coating my face as I force myself from the sea turtle’s body, my mind journeying again, spiraling to rest in the body of a seagull.

The seagull is picking at shells on the beach. I watch through its eyes, exhausted, as its beak prods at the sand. Then, it finds something. Alarms chime through my body as a hard slab, decidedly not normal food, enters our beak and slides down our throat.

Pain reels through me, sharp and cutting as the jagged piece of plastic slices a wound down the length of the seagull’s throat. I nearly cry out, but my throat is clogged. I choke as air abandons me. My mind writhes free of the seagull’s consciousness and diving down, down, down into the depth of the ocean again.

Plastic has corrupted even here. I’m a seal, twisting through the mounds of trash, searching for the large fish I’d chased here. But disappointingly, it is gone. I spin around, about to head back to the surface for a breath when my tail catches in a fishing net that’s pinned to the ground by a heavy rock.

I thrash, and as I do, a plastic bag slips around my neck like a noose. I try to bat it away with my flippers but it only twists, tightening like a vice so that I cannot breathe.

I’m drowning.

Submerged.

Sinking.

Air flies from my lungs as I leave the seal’s consciousness.

But I still drown.

Plastic rains down around me, bottles and bags and boxes and nets. They multiply within seconds, covering me, engulfing me, swallowing me whole. My hands claw at the bottles and boxes, trying to hoist myself out of this horrible hallucination, but they only turn crimson as the

plastic opens wounds on the tender skin of my hands.

I’m bleeding and I’m drowning and I’m suffocating.

I’m dying.

And I realize:

I can never walk out of this, or fly, or crawl, or swim, physically or mentally. I will always be in

this place, this hellish world of pollution that has stolen my breath, my freedom, my life.

I will always be here...

Because this is what planet Earth has become.

Because this is what animals experience all around the world.

Every single day, every single hour, every single minute.

I will always be here.



...

My eyes fly open from my still seated position on my bed.

I gasp down gallons of air that have never tasted so sweet.

Then I feel a throb on my palms and I look down to discover festering cuts all along my hands and arms that stained the white mattress scarlet. I feel my neck, my shoulders, my ankle to discover imprints of red on my pale skin.

The suffocation returned, wrenching breath from me.

The plastic world is back, closing in all around me...

And this time, I cannot escape.

I will always be here.