it’s just, the monsoon doesn’t come on time anymore. the precipitation should be steady, bringing relief to the country full of rice farmers, except now it’s not sure what it owes its dependents. i suppose we haven’t really been kind to it lately. so instead, the climate has reverted to its intincts: reckless and afraid, its face a perpetual grey, the palette ranging only from a luminescent ash-white to opaque shadow. the violent self-preservation of adolescence.
every morning, the sky clouds over, and darkens. rain follows on its heels.
it comes in handfuls and buckets, in drizzles and thunderstorms. and when the floods come? they don’t hold back. look, in this monsoon the climate is self-destructive. it slams doors, then crawls timidly back; refuses to speak, then screams through its tears. it is confused, lashing out. it is angry, and we are near. in the radius of destruction. we can feel it in the flash floods and droughts, in our waterlogged soils, in the sudden, violent rainfall that ravages crops. it erodes riverbanks, washing away homes, lives and livelihoods.
in this monsoon, the climate is scared in the way of something that’s changing too quickly. where our hands tear its hair out and it spins out of control.
it is breaking down.
and we are tearing it apart.
Description: My work is prose that personifies the monsoon season. It's inspired by the unpredictable rainfall, the climbing numbers of floods, the way the weather feels almost vengeful these days. A slice of a larger writing project on how climate change has intensified each season, this piece is my attempt to outline climate change's impacts in a way that is specific to Bangladesh.
I think a problem faced in motivating people towards sustainability is that it's so easy to view environmental problems as removed from us, and that makes them easy to ignore. I tried to create an imagery-heavy, emotional appeal to bridge that distance between us and the world around us.
Editors: Cathay L., Erika Y.
Photo Credits: Unsplash