UNREQUITED DESIRE

Vivian Nabisere (Uganda)
Honorable Mentions

The devil wears humanoid faces. This reality is especially transparent as I struggle for breath, scanning the lifeless edges of the once vibrant coral branches that have always been my natural dwelling. A habitat that was once bristling with biodiversity, now bleached and diseased with mournful whispers of severe loss. To either side, in my wide visual field, fish are being coerced downwards under their weight, eyes sunken and gills discolored. Similar to the dying coral, my brethren are perishing, succumbing to hypoxia. Regrettably, I, the useless chief to the shoal, is helplessly suffocating with them. Two spring tides ago, many of them I lost to starvation, as famine plunged the sea. Currently, I am barely surviving, my mind swirling with dimness. Flapping my fatigued tail, I endeavor to wade towards their corpses, but they just move further away, gradually sinking to the sea bed.
The high turbidity of the waters reduces my visibility, hindering my attempt at a viewing. Unable to clearly see my shoal mates a last time, a fire so overwhelming darts from my desolate heart to my gills. An icy shudder explores my weary fins as I accept the epiphany of who is responsible for this mass kill. It is all the fault of those brutal conceited terrestrial beings, the humans. They are solely guilty for this fateful finale to my shoal and dwelling. Despite not being sea dwellers, they dared to mindlessly destroy it with all its inhabitants. Where the sea is natural law for life to me, it is a means to an end to them.
In negligence, they dispose of sewage and garbage from their waste streams, sewer pipes and navigating ships into the sea. Subsequently, the water quality worsens and plastic in sewage falls further into the sea, coming into contact with the coral reef. This makes the ravishing seaweeds on the coral branches susceptible to disease. They therefore die generating a dullness in the reef radiance; coral bleaching. The seaweeds are food to me and countless aquatic animals. Garbage releases toxins that fishes take in and they accumulate in our bodies.
Furthermore, neither does their viciousness spare our young. To fill their economic stomachs, they use unselective nets to extract us from the sea in large quantities, many under reproductive maturity. Without progeny for our continuity, our population is gradually lessening and we are headed towards extinction. The fishes can only swim on as heavy metals namely lead, cadmium are deposited by dust and other aerosols into the sea. They are released into the atmosphere as the brutes, perhaps obliviously, mine and operate fossil fuel burning machines. The heavy metals impair our smell sense, hampering our ability to find food and avoid predators. They further stunt the growth of our young.
Humans also cultivate next to shores, raising the potential of runoff containing a lot nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. When this nutrient-rich run-off flows into the sea, algal blooms are boosted. The algae grow nearly everywhere. With their prominent presence, the sunlight is blocked thus causing high turbidity. Consequently, the productivity growth of seaweeds is hindered and visibility is lessened. The seaweeds, food to my kind, waste away. Later, the algae decompose, utilizing plentiful oxygen in the process. At this point and time, it is due to the oxygen depletion that the ripples of afterlife sweep over me.
Ruthless as orcas chasing after their prey, hardly do they hesitate in massively destroying terrestrial flora. Therefore, several beings on land are left homeless. Carbon dioxide also accumulates, trapping a lot of heat which results into global warming, a steady rise in the planet’s temperature. Seawater absorbs most of that heat, instigating higher-than-the-norm water temperatures which are suitable for coral damage and decay, a degeneration of my home. Soon my region will become dead zoned, as the humans do far more that harms the sea. What can I do? I am only a helpless perch, desperately clinging to unrequited desire; hope in the metanoia of a species so selfish.
A bitter smile of empathy clouds my eyes, in awareness that everything is catching up with them. Global warming is likewise fatal for the land and its beings. The increased heat is causing drying of numerous water bodies. As a result, there could be water shortage for both humans and other species. Additionally, our extinction reduces the food available to them; they eat us, unfortunately. While feeding on us, the toxins in our bodies are transferred to theirs which greatly threatens their health. The emissions released in the mining and fossil fuel burning increase respiratory illness rates in their children. However, those egoistical beings seem not to understand.
Feeling the gradual fading of my spirit and descending of my exhausted body to the sea floor, my utmost desire is for the humans to discern that the entire planet is the priority. If only they would minimize the rate at which they extract the fishes and reintroduce the wasted seaweeds. In addition, instead of poor disposal of the plastic and sewage, they could recycle and reuse them. Rather than investing in deforestation, they could implement afforestation and reforestation. This is my dying wish. That awareness be bestowed unto them, such that they recognise that despite their increasing demands, fish lives matter too. I thirst for the awakening of their collective effort to save mother earth and all her species, the real wealth.
Oh, I wish, from deep within my waning spirit, that they would understand that in destroying our habitat, and massively killing us, they shatter the biodiversity equilibrium that must exist for the survival of all species. Now, as I surrender to the waves of eternal darkness that surround me, how I crave that … this final dream does not die with me. However, If my dying wish remains in the ocean of wildest dreams, the doomsday of my kind is just the beginning tip in the consequential iceberg, of yet nature’s negative reaction to the deadly actions of mankind.