SAND Some of us were brought by a river, some of us were already at sea. We were born out of cracking, breaking and eroding of mountains, shells, minerals, rocks... Since about half a century, alien elements have been invading our communities. These aliens-called-plastic don't like to talk or take part in ancient rituals we call cycles. When we are in motion, they call us sediment. But now that we're resting on the bottom of the North Sea, they speak of sand. Somewhere around here used to be a fishing village. Centuries ago we seeped and creeped inside the houses. Humans moving out of our way referred to us as White Death. And while we're recollecting these memories, we're being sucked into the belly of a boat. In motion again, not by wind or water, but by contracts, metal, a diesel motor... Despite massive movement, we are no longer spoken of as sediment. Now they call us nourishment. The boat takes us closer towards an island coast, then spits us out. After landing into shallow water, we feel like we might be covering and smothering clams. But we can't do anything about it. The current moves us even further towards the coast and we begin having dreams of being a beach. But just before we reach the shore, we're being pulled away by another current. The Wadden Sea. She is hungry for sand. And we're thinking it looks like the purpose of all this disturbance, isn't for us to be sunbathing. Not even for us to be protecting the coast from the rising sea. We are tied up in a relocating-and-covering-up-damage game. We have been paid for by an oil company. But we can't help it. They still call us nourishment sometimes, but mostly we are spoken of as compensation, somewhere deep inside a strategic environmental impact assessment. And so we keep moving on as White Death[slash]sediment[slash]nourishment[slash]compensation. We hover above subsided soil having a major identity crisis. Our way is blocked by dwarf eelgrass. and because they are so rare nowadays, we're happy to just lie around them... But there are so many lugworms! We move through their bodies over and over. We are spiral string shit but we notice that we feel fresh and like ourselves, like sand, again. If the worms had not found us, there would have been no choice but to call us mud. We could have been transformed into concrete, glass, solar cells, microchips... These possibilities sound like a possible death to us. Now that we've become part of continuous recycling, we feel like we cannot die. We only worry a bit about the aliens among us slowing down the worms. Someday we will be small and they'll call us silt, and after that, clay. But for now, we're good. When the water resides, twice a day, the wormholes, the air, the water and us, we hiss. In this long stretch of hissing we speak for ourselves.