Treasure

The dolphins are getting Alzheimer's from algae blooms caused by warming waters and toxic runoff and you could see the bloodstains in Sudan from space. The cobalt is mined by children and the music is made by robots and the grownups are wondering where the fireflies went. It is an elephant with an eyepatch and a prosthetic leg. It's a freshly emptied bed in the nursing home. A hand offers you pills to numb the dissonance, but you swat it away and howl naked in the thorns. Somewhere there's an ibis on a piano in a junkyard in the rain. Somewhere else there's a small boy who has just learned the word "treasure". "Look! Buried treasure!" he tells his dad. "No. That's just glass worn smooth by the sea." "Is that treasure?" "No, that's just a shiny candy wrapper shimmering in the sun." "Ooh! THIS is treasure!" "No that's garbage. Put it down." And the boy's vision changes and he no longer sees the treasure in things. He runs to join his dad and they walk together down the shore through a dying world of fading wonder full of worthless beach trash. "He is wrong," you whisper as the blood leaves your body. "There is treasure everywhere." Reading by Tim Foley.