Leave the World Behind

by Rumaan Alam

Trees marked their lives in rings that can’t be seen; people, in the garbage they left everywhere, a way of insisting on their own importance.

People kept calling the Amazon the planet’s lungs. Waist-deep water was lapping against Venetian marble, and tourists were smiling and taking snapshots. It was like some tacit agreement; everyone had ceded to things just falling apart. That it was common knowledge that things were bad surely meant they were actually worse.

Optimists believed they could change the world. They thought if you looked on the bright side, the less bright side would no longer exist.

strawberries someone had thoughtfully hulled.

Strawberries have hulls?