Her cloths were ragged, just patches covered her shrivelling body. Despite the lack of clothes she was feeling too warm. The heat was getting unbearable by the minute and she was praying for a little rain, maybe some clouds so the sun would go away for a while and the suffocating air around her would cool down a little.
Lying alone she could hear people milling about, going to work or to play. Somehow her loneliness made her feel even more ill. She could hear the cars and buses going by adding noise and smoke. Sometimes the smoke got too much, leaving her hacking to catch a breath. Why do those people get to be happy and have a good life while she lay sick and sweltering in the mind-numbing heat?
The chemicals in her veins were making her delirious. When she was young she had worked hard for her children. Then came middle age and more children. She needed to work harder and the drugs kept her going so her children wouldn’t go hungry. Now her children gladly paid for the chemicals to keep her frail body going, but they didn’t want to sit and chat with her. She was too old, too tired, too drugged to make any sense to them.
She thought about her youth then. How beautiful she was and how rich her clothes were. But men had used her beauty for their own satisfaction, told her lies to make her fear for her children and pushed the hated drugs in her veins that left her incapable of ever recovering on her own. And now her beautiful children, ones she had been so proud of, were the same as their fathers – pushing her drugs to drown her feelings.
The doctors came in sometimes and poked and prodded at her. They rambled off names of causes, cures and potions to make her well. But she knew deep in her burning heart that she was dying. She could take no joy in life. Her grandchildren sometimes tried to play with her but she couldn’t play anymore. Everything had been taken from her – everything she could give and some more. And now those men were gone, those children were indifferent and those chemicals in her blood were winning. Did they even care?
She was right in front of them but they just stood by to watch Mother Earth dying.
