How to Recycle Plastic: A Poem

How to Recycle Plastic

by Victoria Cota

Let’s take all the children’s toys and melt them down, create identical plastic bins in which we store our ancient dreams and hollow futures. Basketball shorts and embroidered cardigans. Refrigerated leis, chains of chocolate, fireworks. Self-addressed love letters, adorned in ribbons. You could store your bass trombone, shiny like the moon reflecting the sun. I would store hand-sewn garments and misshapen blue ceramic dogs. We can fill one bin entirely with water, so fresh there are fish inside, and we will name them all individually after our own family. Film photographs stack like collapsed cities. Photos with lots of teeth & geometric sunshine. We would not appreciate the ratio of light to dark tones in the image. There would be no need to collect artillery shells or riot gear. Not a single bin would hold red or blue pins. The masks, the gloves, the plastic can all go to the dump. Just pack yourself up into the most tender objects and pull the plastic lid over your head.

The Bride

Caroline Smith

I first heard this story when I was ten on an educational camping trip to Catalina Island Marine Institute. It was probably 9:30 p.m. and we were sitting at the top of a grassy hill, just finishing our astronomy workshop. Our counselor, Mark, told us it would be time to tell scary stories, and any students that wanted to leave should do so now. That left about 15 little fifth graders sitting under the stars that night, waiting to have their skin crawl and be horrified. It was a good time.

“Okay. Ready?” Mark asked and we all nodded eagerly. “Alright. Our story starts long ago with a woman named Marian. She had beautiful black hair and she worked as a seamstress at her father’s shop near the marina. One day, a sailor, Oscar, came into the shop with clothes that needed to be mended. He and Marian fell in love instantly.

They would meet after work and walk along the harbor as the sun went down. They both loved the ocean, the way Catalina Island interrupted the golden horizon, and loved each other so deeply and fully that their hearts became warm like sunlight when they were together.

Oscar got Marian’s father’s blessing and proposed to her at dusk and she said yes. Marian made her own wedding dress with the lightest lace

of Catalina Island

and the smoothest silk she could afford. They had a small ceremony at the beach on a sunny day.

Oscar got a job ferrying supplies to and from Catalina. The two of them saved and bought a home on the island.

They lived happily there. Marian made clothes to sell to the small community and Oscar came back and forth from the mainland. They lived embraced by the ocean they loved and the warmth of the sun was on them always.

One morning, Oscar left to go pick up supplies in his boat. Marian waved goodbye to him from the dock and went about her business.

The day got cold. Clouds and darkness rolled in. Oscar didn’t return by sunset like he usually

did. The clouds became storms, the ocean was restless, Marian was cold.

Oscar didn’t return the next day. Or the next. He didn’t return the next week, or the next month, or the next. Marian waited. The sun grew blindingly bright and the ocean was still, like a breath being held, and Marian was never warm.

She asked her family and other sailors if they had seen Oscar; none of them did.

On their one year anniversary, Marian pulled out her wedding dress, as beautiful as the night she wore it. She put it on and walked to the dock.

In front of her was the ocean; the reflection of the sun being held in it looked softer than the actual thing: warm.

Marian stepped off the dock into the water, letting the light lace and soft silk drag her down, down, down into the sea.

Some say you can see Marian on the docks of Catalina, waiting for her dear Oscar to return. On warm days, she keeps to herself, but on especially chilling days, when she is upset, she drags boats and people down with her. So be careful not to upset Marian, the bride of Catalina.”

Mark ended the story with some ghoulish oohs, and we were ushered to our cabins for the night, although many of us weren’t able to sleep knowing that she was in the water.