Tower and Town, November 2019 (view the full edition)A Letter From The PacificDear anyone who wishes to read, I have been trapped with this thing for many weeks. This is utter torture; the plastic conceals me. With each passing day my body shrinks and the plastic grows. The pinked colours of the sunrise blind me as I write to you; every day the sunrise gazes sorrowfully at me and its bright happiness now rarely gives me hope. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: the enemy, invading my body. This is my last call for help. Imagine a swamp, thick and sticky like a mixing bowl full of batter; so thick that if you placed your finger in deeply, it would be stuck like cement. Now imagine an ocean, the same but thick with plastic and dead sea birds and fish. Tacky plastic clings to you with every step you take. Every day it crawls closer to you. Plastics are ruling the sea. Every minute a plastic bag throttles an animal to death or eats away at it from the inside. Can you imagine the pain of a crisps packet cutting though the soft layers of your stomach? I feel that pain every day. I worry every minute as another piece of plastic creeps in to the ever-growing patch. I worry every time micro-plastics flow through my rhythmic waves, soon to be swallowed by an unfortunate creature; the next victim of the jaws of plastic. As you sit at your dining room table and enjoy the silent hum of family happiness, your creation grows and grows like a reckless child, each day larger than the day before. And all I can wonder is what are you doing to help? I want it to stop. Please make it stop! I beg you. From the Pacific Ocean Artwork by Pippa Rigby  Thomasina Keyes |