Back to the Dirt

I hit the field with pockets heavy with names, hands reeking of iron. Apples. Each stalk I snap is an answer I can actually hold. I’ve learned to hoard what ripens, coercing that brittle light into the basket, nodding yes to the scrape of the stem.

Bending down, my breath harvests stones. My knees speak gravel—a syntax of grinding I’m finally starting to parse. The furrows know I’m not young. Still, I pace the rows like a slow watch, winding myself tight with every handful of grain.

I keep other crops, too: The roof rain, that thrumming we almost lost; my daughter counting lightning under her breath; my father’s hands, weathered moons hovering over a gate that wouldn’t close.

I keep the wreckage. Those oil-black nights I drove too fast just to outrun the quiet.

Gathering is a net I knit from minutes. I drag it through the day’s water, snagging the small, bright fish of right now before they turn silver and slip downstream. I whisper their names against my teeth, as if the sound could act as an anchor.

The doctor used a careful voice. He slid a calendar between us like a treaty, asked me to look at winter. I walked out carrying the stunned air.

I went back to the dirt. Today I take what the sun made. I take what time is threatening to steal. I take the withered things, and I bless them.

If I have to go, let me leave heavy: Pockets full, arms burning, a seed hemmed into my cuff to drop again. The world is bright. It weighs so much as I walk home.