Inside the Stomach of the Animal
Michelle Esquivias
In the documentary A Plastic Ocean, a marine biologist lays out the pieces of plastic she has found inside a deceased seabird’s gut. After cutting it open, she tells the filmmaker, here is what was inside the stomach of the animal: colorful shards that have broken apart, chips and pieces of plastic that come together once again inside the once-pulsating bird. Big, sharp pieces start to form a small archipelago on a wooden table, bobbing slowly to the gentle rocking of the boat.
In 2015, marine mammals from the Tañon Strait petitioned a case before the Philippine Supreme Court. A corporation is drilling an exploration well into a declared protected seascape. In its decision, the court introduces toothed whales, dolphins, porpoises, and “other cetacean species” as the aggrieved parties. The court also introduces two humans who join the creatures in the petition as their legal guardians and friends. The court considers this investment in the sea animals as an allegation of empathy.
I am afraid of very deep, dark depths. If I imagine myself stranded out in an ocean, I imagine grasping for islands. Surely rocks can be islands as long as I can put my hand at the edge and climb up: seascapes and protection in the span of my touch. If only I could fly. As if my eyes can distinguish the flap of a wing from a feather. In my fever dream, I gulp down the roaring water like rocks.
Of course it is questioned, how can animals speak and stand in a court of law. Which is probably asking, can an animal even endure. The law only rightfully allows the prosecution or defense of a case in the name of persons who stand to benefit from or be injured by a court’s ruling. Justice appears to understand. But still, two truths stand: by our fingertips oil is still seeping into bodies of water and yet justice is still most legible through us. I realize I don’t know how exactly fish breathe. How they even see is beyond me.
Elsewhere, we force ourselves into the bodies of animals, dry-feeding them with jagged bits of humankind, palatable in their unknowing. Or perhaps our unhearing. So our footsteps are incisions into the earth’s flesh. All ragged edges pressing into it are careful curves to the unbeating heart. We cut and cut and cut and evoke care: paper floats to the surface of the frame; there, we command, populate a visible space.
In the end, the Supreme Court nullifies the Tañon Strait Oil Exploration Project. The case is won and the court never had to recognize the native plants and animals as speaking. After all, us humans are competent stewards. We have sufficient rules declaring citizens as stewards — warriors — tasked to enforce environmental laws. Humans have a right to a balanced and healthful ecology, so humans wrote it into our law. Humans, forever writing, continue to write holes into deepwater. Safety, to be felt, must not scare us.
My fever dream, the human’s prayer and death wish: may all life ever be fragmentary. Nature is loud and we wish to scatter this sound. A life mapped out is inevitably an overlap. To brave our own silhouettes, we rush into rooms, forests, oceans, the air as mad animals. Frantic, I cut open the gut of living. We are at the center, unconsciously making a cruel cartography inside flying creatures, to decay and die in the story of our waste.
Michelle Esquivias graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman with a degree in English Studies in 2014 and from the Juris Doctor program in 2019. Her chapbook Introduction to Vases was released in 2012. Her poems have also been featured in Cha, transit, and Kritika Kultura. She was a Fellow for Poetry in the 12th Ateneo National Writers Workshop. She is currently working as a legal associate in Metro Manila. She continues to write.
