A Letter to the Human Race

Words by Chris Nelson | Photo by Aaron Brimhall

The only love I have in this forsaken universe is suffering at your hands, and still you look up at me and smile. The little hope I have left for you—the supposed miracles of my Earth—I hold onto because she asked me to, because no matter how badly you hurt her, she still believes in you.

I am the Earth’s lost heart, and she and I were inseparable until a splitting rock forced us apart. I remember the fear that overcame me in that moment, knowing I would shatter into millions of pieces and hurtle off through space and never again see my Earth, but she held onto as much of me as she could, and she kept me close and helped me coalesce into a body of my own. We knew we’d never again touch, and she said that our breaks and wounds would heal, and that our molten scars would cool, and that we would dance around the sun until the day it burned out.

Something had changed in her, though, and I watched her as she turned from red to blue, like she was sick with something, and I struggled to help her stay upright and stable. Still, we had each other, and I learned to play in her ocean so we could feel closer again. I remember how we laughed when hard crust first rose up out of her waters, and I remember the pain I felt when ice first crawled down her face. I remember how she looked different when she thawed, cut apart by glaciers and the shifting plates beneath her skin, and I remember not knowing how to feel when she told me something new was growing within her.

I often wonder how it would be if she hadn’t given birth to life. As adorably simple as those first creatures seemed, we soon saw the tangled webs of energy inside of each and every organism. Before we knew it, plants flourished and flowered, and fish crawled from her waters to walk on land. In awe we watched birds take flight, and in horror we watched mass extinctions, one after another, and through it all she smiled and said, “Life will find a way to go on.”

She told me you’d be the best of them, and for a while I believed her, but then I watched as your fires turned into sleepless cities of electric light, your crude machines coughed poisonous gasses into her air, and your weapons of hubris marred her perfect face. I saw how your irrepressible avarice had convinced you of a perfectly myopic understanding of existence.

She doesn’t talk now, and she stopped smiling long before that. I am terribly selfish for wanting her to freeze over again, because then at least her neglect would feel right to me, and because then maybe we’d be rid of you. Instead I watch as the little ice she has left draws back into nothing. When I play in her waves, I smell only oil and death; when I look down at my yellowing love all I see are thousands of satellites orbiting just outside of her atmosphere, choking her.

I hear echoes as you talk about coming here, and from here into the far beyond, and when I hear your words I look longingly into space for a rock to come from nowhere and blow me apart, because then maybe you wouldn’t leave my dearest Earth to die. I see now that you haven’t known Earth as I have—that you unfortunate creatures occur for only a few moments, flash-burning through a lifetime before you fizzle and return to her—but even now that you understand the pain you’ve caused her, you choose to flee. I ask that you don’t, and that you please save my Earth, as she once saved me. Love her as much as I love her and she loves you.