Oil and water: what do you see?

I was out doing errands in the rain when I saw this stream of oily water gushing down the sidewalk from a gas station. The toxic flow is on its way through the drains to the river, to fish that look like this effluent. 

I thought of the word “ensnared” as Alexis Pauline Gumbs uses it in her book, Undrowned (2020). We are ensnared in a culture dependent on fossil fuels, ensnared in capitalism, ensnared in a pandemic. Our leaders tell us to be socially distant but return to work and school (for the economy), quarantine and test ourselves at home (there are no tests), wear N95 masks (unavailable for two and a half years), and wash our hands. We were already washing our hands.