by Ben Weilerstein
I
You were wrong about environmentalism, man, no that’s not
what I think no, I’m not really an environmentalist because if I say I am
you’ll say in your head I’m saying things you don’t think need to be said, out
loud, at all so, no, I’m not an environmentalist and I don’t feel a rush of
flight, of my heels lifting up off the ground when I recycle a plastic bottle not
like I do when I recite over and over again until it doesn’t leave my head for
years, “stop! the! pipeline!”
or something like that, y’know my voice woven into hundreds
and thousands of others because dammit this isn’t about me
this isn’t about me, maybe you can tell I’m tired because
wouldn’t it be nice if I could just lie down and rest in a bed of moss like I
liked to imagine when I was younger and
I wouldn’t have to keep telling you and them and everybody
else that I’m not really into the environment and what even is the environment
and I could stand on top of a wind-whipped rainswept mountain up north and let
my heels lift higher than I thought they could and god please could I now
maybe I can’t tell you I’m tired because you’re tired of
other tired people telling you what to do all day and shit, man, that’s tiring,
too
II
maybe I didn’t listen enough
maybe I didn’t ask you to listen to me enough, not to my
words, no, to me, because if I did I thought you wouldn’t want to and then I
didn’t know how you would know you were listened to and heard and then I don’t
know what you would do
maybe it’s hard to care and nobody cared to teach us how and
no matter how high my feet fly it still won’t heal me
III
I’m writing this on a train after work.
After seeing a replica of my hometown where the football
field was the same and the old train station and the new train station were the
same and grass clippings still fresh and drying smelled exactly the same and if
you just squinted the right way in the right corners the sunset could take your
breath away, but those fields and lawns and the bodies among them were deep in
a different nightmare where everything was poison,
where the streets were filled with poison and the shortcuts
kids took to get to school, or even better, out of it, were covered in puddles
of poison as colorful as the graffiti lining our shortcut but so much better at
killing,
where many days many years ago a father came home from work
at the chemical dye plant sweating in color, his body releasing the poison it
absorbed that day,
where everybody knows somebody who died, preventably, of
cancer.
I’m writing this on a train after work.
Two people were fighting and then hugging, and crying and
hugging. They ran off the train together.
IV
I love you, I think.
I love you as much as any friend anyway
and for the sake of my heels I hope that’s a hell of a lot.
Ben Weilerstein is Toxics
Action Center’s
Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island
Organizer. Originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia,
the Greater Boston area became home for Ben when he studied at Tufts University.
There, he spent some of his time completing a BS in Chemistry and most of his
time organizing around fossil fuel divestment and other climate justice issues.
His organizing experience also includes completion of a Climate Summer
internship, during which he helped organize communities in Western
Massachusetts to stop a fracked gas pipeline. Ben is currently a
JOIN for Justice Fellow. Ben is based in the Boston
and Providence
offices, where he helps communities organize to protect their health and the
environment.
