Single-Use Mermaid

She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I watched her as if, in a trance, for an entire afternoon.

On the first day I’d seen her, it was her melodic voice that drew my attention. There were others, but she was by far the most unique.

I visited her by the end of the pier after my morning walk, every day, for a week. Oftentimes, I would show her the multitude of colourful shells that I had collected from the shore on my way.

But on this particular morning, something felt off. There was a wrongness on the wind as it brushed against my skin.

I soon came to see the reason for the utter dread in the air.

I ran as fast as I could to the beautiful creature lying on the beach. I held her, helpless, as she gasped for breath. She was dying, but in her eyes, I saw no fear.

A crowd was quick to gather, and I was shuffled back as the professionals moved in.

As I wiped the tears from my eyes, so too, I wiped away my blinders, and reality began creeping in.

The beautiful creature had revealed its true self. My mermaid was, in fact, a beached whale. Her eyes were unchanged, and though she was dying, there was no fear.

“Plastic pollution…” I heard someone say.

“Single-use plastic…” said another.

But, I couldn’t bring myself to listen, and with nothing more that I could do to help, I began to walk.

Not home, but to the pier. That’s where my body was taking me, though I did not know why.

Perhaps I would see something that might cheer me up, or perhaps I would toss the shells in my pocket--that I’d collected--into the ocean.

I was at the end of the pier before long and pulled the shells from my pocket, but I found only plastic lids. Startled, I dropped them.

Several bounded over the edge and into the water, but the ocean was not clear or blue as my eyes had me believe previously.

No, it was littered with rubbish. A thick layer that lapped against the pier and shore, as if it were seafoam, that stretched along the coastline.

Suddenly, I heard the mermaid’s melody. I turned my gaze out to the open sea and saw a pod of whales. It was their mournful requiem I could hear on the horizon.

“Is this what we made?” Their song prompted this question in my mind.

I left, hurriedly, back down the pier and past the increasing crowd of gawkers.

An itch made me take one last glance over my shoulder, to the beautiful marine mammal dying on a bed of man-made shells.

There was still no fear in her piercing gaze, but suddenly, I realized what that look in her eye truly was.

It was pity.

I stared down to the last plastic lid still in my hand.

“Was this a single-use life?”

Planet or Plastic?