Saltwater
Author: Katarina Junod
Caption: This poem hopes to convey the pain and suffering that many climate migrants experience when they lose their homes to rising ocean levels, extreme weather events, or other similar effects of climate change.
Tags: Climate Change and Oceans
Submission:
Saltwater
They said it would be decades,
decades of time before the ocean took my home.
But years later, the wind and waves came
rushing over my ancestral homeland
washing away everything my family had built,
everything I had ever known.
Debris filled the streets and
tears lined the eyes
of people who no longer knew where home was.
Planes and helicopters came.
USA. UN. EU.
Abbreviations and acronyms from the countries
that pollute our air,
raise our oceans,
and warm our climate.
“We have a place for you to stay,”
they say,
as if they’re helping
as if they didn’t help cause this.
But we stepped onto helicopters and airplanes,
our home fading into the distance,
succumbing to the waters,
tears in our eyes.
