With My Hands in the Earth
I learned to work in the garden that year.
It was the only time I felt right. The only way I felt peace.
I liked the feeling - the damp, dank, heaviness. The worms that would grace my fingertips then recoil back into the darkness below.
My hands would feel rich. Bathed. Kissed by the very heart of the land.
Later they would become dry and the skin would split at the joints. The back of my hands was the cracked desert, punished by the sun.
Whakanuia te tangata ringa raupā.
They were ugly.
But I was proud of them.
*
I feel more empowered now. More alive. More awake. More alert.
Has this clarity come from you?
A gift you left behind?
A passing on of your experiences to help me navigate this world?
Or is this a natural progression?
A coming of age?
With the passing of a generation, the fire passes down to those who survive.
Arming them.
We are the protectors now.
*
The pain is nothing like I imagined it might be.
I look at my chest.
I half expect to see an incision.
A gaping wound, like a body mid autopsy.
But there is nothing there.
It lies deeper.
Hidden under the surface.
It is mine to bear alone. Festers where no one can see.
It burns in there.
The embers constantly glowing.
Now and then, they erupt into heavy fire. It consumes my body. It rips through every limb, every vein, every cell.
*
I got a little fat that year.
I would sit alone in my house.
I didn’t want to read. I couldn’t write. That was gone.
I watched the TV. Well, I didn’t really. I stared at it as the pictures moved in front of my eyes and the light flickered in my face.
I would open the wine and drink a glass. Then one more.
That felt better.
Some nights I felt bad about the wine.
So I got kai instead. Only it wasn’t kai. Some manufactured fake crap that someone had wrapped up in plastic.
I would stare at it and wonder; what will people say two thousand years from now when they look back at the poison we sold to one another? And that we willingly stuck it in our bodies?
And yet I ate it.
I ate until my belly was sore.
Then I poured a glass of wine.
*
He aroha whakatō, he aroha ka puta mai.
That was you, man.
It leaked from your body.
When you were sick, the drugs took that from you. They tricked your heart into fear and anger. Pain.
They took you to the memories of times before.
Memories that no one should ever have to bare witness to.
Especially you.
With a heart so kind.
I don’t know how you survived.
A boy. With big eyes, you took it all in.
Madness.
In those last moments, you came back to us once more.
You were free.
Your body put its hands up.
No more.
You came back in.
Your voice - it sounded like the trees. Deep and wooden, with the breeze caressing your leaves.
*
You showed me the earth.
You showed me my place.
My feet, bare, on the face of Papatūānuku.
That’s where I’m happy. That’s where I’m calm.
I remember watching you.
So much aroha.
So slow. Patient. Careful.
You didn’t teach me with your words.
You saved those for your stories.
You who should have been awarded an honorary PhD for your dedication to oral histories.
No, the love for the earth you showed me with your hands.
