Once upon a city, where pinkies are polished, acrylic nails clack keyboards, and thumbs thumb intangible texts, touch is plastic, digital, artificial.

Now upon the lands, my fingers find the earth below our busy feet. The fine hair of roots, the symmetrical teeth of leaves, the cool scent of photosynthesis. Digits dig into fertile dirt, where bulbs are birthed and rhizomes rise. My palms hold the rich blood of Mother Earth. The work is raw and tactile, viscous and resonant with ancestral toil and sweat. Each cut and scrape is a needed reminder that our veins are filled by Her. Her bones of clay and skin of grass, scarred by machine and blade, craves the touch that too many fingers have forgotten.

My hands start to remember, what the deep roots, the supple stems, the green blades and infinite seeds and spores already know.

My hands remember.