Earthworms call the soil home.
For generations,
they have gestated in the dark,
turning its rot into fertility,
its decay into nourishment,
feeding a future
that will orphan them.
They pay their taxes in nutrients.
Ask for no monuments,
leave no signatures,
expect no harvest of their own.
Their labour feeds the grass,
the trees,
the crops,
the lives that will never know
what made their living possible.
And then someone comes with a shovel.
The earth is cut open.
Colonies are pulled apart,
villages emptied,
unregistered lives displaced.
What took generations to build
takes an afternoon to undo.
The soil closes over the wound.
No census of the missing.
No memorial for the dead.
No accounting of the bodies
that made it fertile.
The grass returns.
The trees keep growing.
The ground carries on
as though nothing
has been taken from it.
Next time you feel particularly patriotic,
think of the earthworms buried beneath your house.
The country has not lost its people.
It has learnt to grow over them.
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