My Absolute Darling

by Gabriel Tallent

“The temperature may rise six degrees in the coming decades, and that’s not just ‘rising temperatures,’ that’s a cataclysm. You think we can stop that? People don’t believe in obesity, and that they can see in the fucking mirror. They can’t take care of their own goddamn bodies. How many people die because their hearts are grimy with plaque, do you think? A lot. What is it—seventy percent of all Americans are overweight? Half of those are obese? And do you think—can this person, this average American, take care of anything? No. Fuck no. So the natural world, which they cannot see for all their roads and gas stations and schools and jails, the fucking natural world, which is more important and more beautiful than anything this average American has ever seen or understood in his whole fucking life, the natural world is going to die, and we’re going to let it die, and there’s no way we can save it. Fuck.”