First of May

By Breeze Navarro

In commemoration of 150 years below 1.5 degrees, the annual First of May Festival invites photographers to submit a photo-essay depicting our legacy. We invite you to reflect on the Northeast's progress and consider the parts of our world you would share with our ancestors, if given the chance. The First Place winner will receive the opportunity to spend a day taking pictures with multi-award-winning nature photographer Jude Clay, and all finalists will be displayed in the First of May Gallery for the duration of the festival.
 
Entry Guidelines:

• Submit five photos which tell a story
• Photos should be submitted in high quality and JPG format
• For each photo, please include a description and your reason for selection
• The use of AI is strictly prohibited—please refer to the Art Council's Guidelines
• Entries must meet technical requirements
• Entry Deadline: 08 April 2250

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Entrant Details:
First Name: Aurie
Last Name: Gold
Address: P/O Box 3045
City: Water Falls
Region: Northeast
 
1. Photo Description: This bell-shaped blossom glows with borrowed sunlight. A black witch moth hovers mid-flight, the outline of its wings clear against the white, shimmering petals. It's one of dozens of bioengineered flowers lighting this neighborhood, the moth one of thousands that now reside in the area. This photo reminds me of archaic silhouette portraits, clear black lines against a white background. I had a silhouette portrait made of myself once. I liked its simplicity in this age of stimulation, exploration, and everything you could possibly want.

Why You Chose this Photo: Black witch moths proliferated when lamps first blossomed, their wings brushing cheeks as people arrived home after dark. We were thrilled when the neighborhood voted to let them stay, a clear sign of how far we’d come. No longer did we eliminate wildlife from our domestic spaces; we welcomed it.
Cecilia loved living on a street lit by flowers. When she first bought the home, it was dilapidated and set for demolition. Cecilia, Rose, Ivy and I rescued it with months of hammering and constructing and painting. Now it has been beautifully restored many times over. The ripe red door is framed by black iron lace and bears a gold knocker. I wrap my fingers around it, feel its cold in my creases, and knock three times into the emptiness.

My knocks have always been answered, but today I’m too late. After 240 years, Cecilia completed her life. I open the door to a Snow White casket where Cecilia holds dried roses like she has fallen asleep in winter. I stand back, afraid to move closer. I don’t understand this body rendered doll-like, but it’s what Cecilia wanted. She was never afraid of being seen. That’s why she led the campaign and, later, the city. I lean forward to touch cold glass as grief swells and swallows me. This is my first goodbye.

2. Photo Description: Is it house, forest or garden? How pliable reality has become. I’ve been here a hundred times, but when I study this photo of my grandma, a ghost through which her home can be seen, I can’t help but reflect on the strangeness of this age.

It is a house-shaped garden, or a garden-shaped home, with ivy pouring up the walls and a moss-laden roof. A chipped, wooden fence frames the yard and wildflowers poke through the slats. Grandma leans against a metal mailbox which she refuses to throw away. Like me, she clings to the past.

Why You Chose this Photo: A bus pulls up, quiet as blue sky, and I settle into my seat to watch the world pass. I had hoped for silence, but two advocates of the “Small Talk with Strangers” campaign sit down in front of me and start chattering like the world’s going to end. It’s exhilarating for the extroverts, exhausting for people like me. I lean back as the noise pricks my skin, wishing I’d ordered a car.

We ride through the city. Vines dangle from sky-struck balconies, tomatoes line the medians, and lichen coats every street sign. I like my nature wild, but these ecocities are far superior to the metal megalopolises of the past.

When I arrive, Grandma is chatting to her neighbor over the fence. They are dim in the bright sun. She could have uploaded her consciousness and danced through decades in the cloud, but she wanted to keep me company, so she became a hologram instead. She seems happy enough, but I worry I keep her from somewhere else. When I reach the porch, she turns on the sprinklers using a tablet by the door. I hold out my hand, let my fingers catch the drops. Ghost towns don’t look the way they used to.

We face each other over a steaming mug of tea. On this day, there is little to say. She feels my decision in the way I try to touch her hand.

“Will you go, when I’m gone?” I ask.

Grandma hums at the plants surrounding us. “This house still needs a tender. But one day, when I’m sure you’re gone, I might complete.”

I can’t hug her, so we face our palms to each other and align our fingers. I slip my hand through so her light overlaps my skin.
 
3. Photo Description: Spiraling silver towers ride grassy rolling hills. They twinkle into the far distance as though a colony of spaceships have descended from the sky. If homes have become gardens, farms have become cities.

Why You Chose this Photo: Worn, brick paths lead me through the farm. I step slow, meditative, as though I'll never run out of time, gazing up at the glorious skyscrapers. Each tower is the same aside from the greenery spilling from their spirals, but I know which one holds Rose.

I walk into her tower and climb the steps, plucking mulberries along the way. Brief pops of juice taste like her perfume in their sweetness. The scent of sweat, sun, and gardenia followed Rose wherever she went.

Rose arrived at the city eager to study, get her degree, then go back to her family’s farm. When she and Cecilia met, their energy coalesced as I witnessed their sparks. Cecilia and I were roommates, Cecilia found Rose, and Ivy wandered into our group last. We had so many ideas, desires. In time, Rose ran back to her rolling plains, but she never stopped visiting.

I thought Rose would live forever. We all did. She loved nothing more than to work with the earth. But her energy waned, and she sat for longer and longer until one day, she didn't get up. After, we composted her body for the mulberries. She wanted to provide sustenance even in death.

We said we’d die together atop a mountain. We were young. People grow up. As wind lifts my hair, I pretend I smell her perfume one last time.
 
4. Photo Description: This home reminds me of houses we passed on road trips when I was a child, broken and abandoned on the edges of forests. It is worn. The roof is faded and remnants of green paint pepper the walls. One can see black spots where there are holes in the porch. It sits deep in a forest at the end of a dirt path. The house doesn't look lived in, but it's where Ivy lives. At least, it's where we used to be able to find them.

Why You Chose this Photo: As the taxi pulls up to the general store, I’m unwilling to step out. I’m close to my destination, but unsure I want to reach it.

The town looks like it used to. Chain link fences, roots splitting the sidewalk. But I know it’s all ecologically sound; the streetlights solar-powered, the sidewalks carbon-neutral. It will soon be obsolete. They are giving more of Earth back to the wilderness and small towns like this no longer have a place. Too spread out. Too disruptive. Best to live in compact cities and leave nature alone. I agree with it, I just don’t know where I’ll fit in.

A dappled path leads through the woods to Ivy’s home. Ivy, the wild one, the radical, the activist. They were the fire beneath our feet. They gave us the energy to go on. But Ivy was the first to leave our shining city. Cecilia wanted to lead, Rose to sustain, but Ivy? They wanted to be forgotten.

The door is slightly ajar and when I open it, the bare table and cold fireplace tell me the room is empty. I sit at the table a while, flicking a pen around my fingers, hoping and waiting and hoping and waiting. But time runs thin, and I grow tired faster than I grow old.

I write a letter to Ivy, so they’ll know I’ve gone.

I look around the room one last time as memories play across my vision. Then shut the door behind me.

5. Photo Description: Jagged blue peaks rise like ghosts through curling mist. Green trees are a thick carpet across the mountains. A soaring raptor cries out, a dark speck in the corner. One can just see the trail disappear into the trees at the base of the mountain.

Why You Chose this Photo: The last time I was here, we were together. No partners, no kids. Cecilia carried the book I insisted on bringing up the mountain and talked biotech with Rose. Ivy marched ahead with headphones as I fell behind with binoculars. We had just started our campaign to green the city. We didn’t know it would lead to biolamps and mayorship and vertical farms. We didn’t know much, but we knew each other.

We stayed in touch through the years, but life goes on. Gaps between visits grew and a decade passed before I realized how long it had been. I stopped traveling, moved back to Cecilia’s city, tried to get us together more often. But as Rose and Cecilia had kids, grandkids, great grandkids, the demands of a city and a farm, I couldn’t catch the frayed ends of our friendship.

And Ivy? Impossible to find. We never knew if they were dead or alive.

My loneliness grew from seed to gnarled, wind-blown tree, unable to stand upright, reaching out for more. Then Cecilia completed, and Rose completed, and Ivy is lost. And now I would like to be gone too.

I’m going on 241 years. Here, at the edge of a mountaintop, it’s time to complete my life and join my friends. Descendants, I ask you: Take care of the planet, the way my ancestors didn’t. The way we did.
 
6. Photo Description: Our faces are squished together so our wrinkles run like rivers to the inevitable ocean. A mole above Ivy’s left eyebrow, a chip in my right front tooth. Behind us the sky is ever blue. Beyond us is a wilderness we’ve yet to explore.

Why You Chose this Photo: I stand at the edge of oblivion, stare out into the depths of sky, sea blue, night dark, canyon deep and wonder what’s out there for me. I don’t have children. I had partners, then didn’t. I was always happy enough, until I wasn’t.

Yet I don’t jump. I’m unwilling to let go. Instead, I ask myself over and over why they had to leave. I want life but don’t want to live it alone.

Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine

A song rises from the night, like an angel, or an eagle. Ivy stands with an uncanny grin and her presence washes over me: the embrace of a knitted blanket, thick hot chocolate sliding down my throat, the wonder of seeing a shooting star. We sit together as the moon traverses the sky and Ivy convinces me to come home, to travel with her through the wild lands, permits be damned. They promise they won’t leave without me.

I believe them. 

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​Breeze Navarro is a speculative writer from Florida. Their work has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Twin Bird Review, and Thimble Literary Magazine. If they aren’t reading or writing, they’re hiking in search of birds, mushrooms, and stars.