Choking Rivers

I just walk this bridge every morning.

And every morning, I look down. My grandmother said children once swam here.

The water ran clear.

Fishermen came at dawn.

The river was the city breathing. Now it chokes.

And so do we. Plastic bags drift like ghosts on the surface.

The smell hits before you reach the bridge.

Above it all — power lines, grey sky, motorcycles idling — life goes on as if this is normal.

As if we have accepted it. What breaks me is not the plastic.

It is the silence.

The way we look away.

Cross the bridge faster.

Tell ourselves someone else will fix it. No one else is coming. This dying river is the same air in our children's lungs.

The same soil.

The same crisis we photograph and scroll past. I took this photo because I needed someone else to feel that devastating weight — something precious dying in plain sight. If it moved you — share it.

Refuse one plastic bag.

Demand action.

Show up. The river cannot speak.

For now, we have to.