Worm Hands

On tending, aching, and turning the stomped-on soil

My hands are filled with dying world and so the worms have crawled under my fingertips again. They turn and turn and ache for harvest, so I drop them in the gardens I know.

I bring a stack of canned food to a pantry in the middle of my city, and a small silly cake mix taped to a smaller bottle of olive oil. I feel the big world ache in my small hands, and the worms turn and turn, and drop everywhere. I hope their little burrows keep this particular soil fertile. I hope they kiss the roots of the birthday child I do not know.

I call a friend. I tell her how the light breaks through the blinds in my doorway. Our hands are many minutes away and filled with dying world, and though the crawling is loud under our fingertips, we laugh together, and this turns the worms and puts them to work on harvest. Our hands are sister crops: we grow stronger for proximity, and we link them together whenever we can, and we reach for every type of light that breaks through to us.

I make a small list. I make a short zine. I give away a thing I can afford to give, and I give out the hope given to me, and I hold out my hands to the world for the taking.

Everything has a season, and some seasons are harder than others, and I have never learned to like the crawling that reaches into me and begs for growth, but this is how it happens.

Hands to the gardens we’ve already been tending. Hands to the fertile grounds. Hands to the dying earth, and every earth body that turns and turns and burrows deep inside to give it space to breathe.

No ones likes the crawling that comes over us when the world needs a turning. It makes my hands ache. It fills me with little gardeners that beg and beg for fruits of labor.

I take them to full and bustling gardens of care, and reach open hands out in love, and let them drop where they may. I take them to empty fridges and empty buildings and empty politics. I make a fist, and drop worms where they might.

My neighbors and I are sister crops. The worms are local, their revolutions are local, the world is local, the revolution is local. My neighbors and I, and all of our hands, are rooted deep like seeds.

The season above is a hard one. Every news update fills us with crawl. We turn the stomped soil over, and soothe it. We go to the gardens we have never abandoned and fill them with birthday cake and fruit. We go to the gardens we hope could exist, and fill the empty with our fullness.

The light breaks through the blinds in my doorway.
My hands are filled with dying world, and aching.

I fill them with renegade sun.

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