Planet or plastic

7 millimetres

Pain.

The heat beating against my skin unimpeded by the thin remnants of an atmosphere. The air laced with the pungent smell of sun-scorched plastic, a now familiar fragrance that swept across the beaches every summer. The waste had been dredged away, allowing guests of all ages to enjoy the beach. Once a common pass time beach visits were now luxuries, requiring days of preparation. The far side of the beach held newly shifted mounds of plastic, barely hidden beneath sand.

In the distance gently directed by the computer-generated current she danced through the water. These were the highlights of her summer, things I hardly appreciated in my youth. And unlike my youth, she would never see the glimmering schools of fish or feel the unexpected brush of seaweed. It had always been like this, each year something on our planet was lost and with each change came a new picture of childhood.

Pain.

My feet stung as I rushed across the blistering sand towards her. Blood poured through her tightly clasped hands as she emerged from the water. Behind her finger's, lips drenched in scarlet and a throat tearing and swelling. She crashed heavily against the sand inches out of my reach. A hollow wheezing the only sound beyond the panicked footsteps of onlookers and the distant chime of sirens.

Minutes felt like hours, time failing to restore the breath that escaped my lungs. My mind swam with thoughts, fears and memories. The tide of doctors seemed only to rise, leaving more questions than answers in their wake. As days turned into weeks, I longed for answers and countless exams later those answers were given. The diagnosis: 7 millimetres of thermoplastic, lapped into her lungs in the place of air. Once inhaled, impaling inches of tissue was easily done by the jagged mass.

Pain.

The clenching of my heart was the only feeling anchoring me to the ground. Forcing me to acknowledge that my reality was harsher than the darkest parts of my imagining. Sunken cheeks, pale skin, glazed eyes. The whirring machines were the only indication she was alive. She had withered away. What remained was a pained shell straining through each agonising breath.

A deluge had formed in her chest submerging her lungs and leaving little room for air. Doctors ebbed in and out of the room. The constant flow of footsteps, adding to the waves of anxiety.

Another doctor entered. No clipboards, no equipment. His sullen demeanour was all it took for me to understand. There was no treatment. The damage inflicted on her lungs was irreparable. My heart sank.

Six months since her death and I still searched for someone to blame. But with 7 billion plastic users on earth, who isn't at fault? Raised in a generation who littered habitually; I never thought to tell my daughter, she lived in a world where life could be taken away by a piece of plastic.

It never seemed to matter when it was just the animals.