Author’s Note (11 March 2021)

Thank you so much to everyone who has written to me regarding this poem. I am moved by the way this poem has continued to travel around the world, into classrooms with young minds and into urgent conversations about our current time. I apologize for not making the poem’s text publicly available sooner. Here it is below.

With care,
Eunice

PACIFIC SALT

perhaps the further you are
the smaller we become
in this spectacle of drowning
as you watch baby teeth float to shore
after the ocean spits out another hometown
 
you can pretend we aren't here
like you pretend this earth will feed us
for as long as soil cracks 
beneath machinery
 
our pulses know the rhythm of emergencies   
just like our islands know the pacific salt
that cradles them
there was a time it could
preserve us
 
and now the number of people
displaced by natural disasters 
tripled the number of war refugees
how can you see sky and not admit decay? 

this world is in a race to turn away from the ruins
whether family history or a whole country
shatters against the tide
whether we keep our lives but lose
our homes
we lose

and how many times has home
become collateral damage for a business deal?
when the smoke rises to a bankrupt sky
tell me this fight for us doesn't end
where your borders begin

now my hometown is still drying its feet
as more poison bleeds overhead   
they say it is sacrifice so we can live in comfort
but what shelter can we find in disease?
these anthems of rebuilding 
blooming from our chests
were made to heal

collect the stones from your mouth
there is no grace in sinking
let us not gorge our pockets with false promises
to stop nations from drowning
to protect our people’s food grown from the land
so no child’s stomach will swell with the ocean
again

let us not say there’s nothing
we could have done
let this be the beginning of us 
rising