After the Humans

(A writing exercise from Youth Speaks writing circle, every Thursday from 5 - 7 at the Seattle Central Public Library, open to all youth 13-21 with word interest or passion!)

A few weeks after the planet shrugged—typhoons, tsunamis, a tectonic grind—and freed itself from the clammy grip of humans (and the planet felt bad about this, somewhat as a human might feel upon crushing a bumblebee that hadn’t yet stung, but whose presence seemed to be growing inexorably from nuisance to threat), the downtown Seattle library still stood—or, rather, leaned, tipped as it was by a filthy tidal wave that set it to rest against the neighboring skyscraper, one-third full of murky seawater, like an odd toy in the bottom of a drained aquarium. The Puget Sound itself had been spoiled by the spillage of countless metric tons of human civilization’s offal: diesel, sewage, chlorine, acids, gas and Freon and the half-solid waters that lapped at downtown’s waterfront hosted no marine life that any self-interested creature would consume. The gulls and hawks and the odd Peregrine falcon that used to feast amid the rain of tourist-tossed French fries and the bait fishes of the bay had grown weak with hunger and sick with the smoking wreckage of human life and believed themselves to be on the way to a similar end as the wingless fools who were now gone forever. Until one day an indefatigable gull named Simon caught sight of a flash of silver in one of the thousands of triangular windows in the a-kilter husk of the library. Simon veered in for a closer look and indeed, on what had once been reasonably called the third floor, he could make out not one but several winking bodies in the tepid sea that had poured into the library by way of the tsunami before poisonous ruin could occur in that celestial sized scoop of water.

Fish!

Elated but panicked to miss the chance, desperate to prove to himself it was real, Simon snatched a chunk of cement from the decay of 4th Avenue, soared to a strategic height, angled his wings for proper aerodynamics, and let loose his tool, which plummeted true and shattered the window nearest where he’d glimpsed his bounty. Simon banked tight circles as the green water fluted out of the side like a hole poked in a water balloon, till finally the arching bodice of a large steelhead was silhouetted against the blood red dying sun over what used to be the Puget Sound and he let loose a cry that humans would have thought desolate, but which actually articulated great joy and dove toward his prize, his survival.