What do we define as nature?

Is the rainy puddle next to renovated freshman dorm nature?

Is the dust clouding my tearful eye nature?

What about the way a groundhog buries its face in the middle of a large tree as we breeze across campus?

Or how my nails cling on to dead skin no matter how hard I try to peel it off?

What if nature is not a beautiful scene of the holistic and feminine?

It seems as though everyone wants nature.

But nobody wants nature.

Or maybe they do want nature, but only the most photogenic of blossomed flowers and only the freshest cut grass?

And not the wildest bushes or the thickest, stockiest stems with nothing on top to “show for it”.

It was never really about preserving nature, now, was it?

But only making the beautiful more beautiful and the ugly abstained from the picture.

You can be the ripest peach in the garden, and there will be someone who hates peaches.

But what if peaches are still held as the epitome of beauty, and every other fruit has to be thankful towards any civilian that gives it the time of day?

What if the moth that constantly gets degraded for not being a butterfly.

Doesn’t want to keep being told “Just be grateful you’re no longer a caterpillar.”