Black Roots in Spring

More about Black Roots in Spring

The ground felt the distant sunlight before we did.
It came slowly, oozing through the buried hours at the speed of light that had somehow been reduced to a crawl — eternity forced into a narrow hallway. Time slowed the way a commuter train slows without stopping, gliding past stations where nobody gets off and nobody quite arrives. Perhaps next year, the conductor says. Perhaps the year after that.

Above ground we walked in coats the color of soil turned over by memory. Couture black, root-black — garments cut as if from the underside of seasons. The fabric hung like damp earth shaken loose from winter’s fist. Each step tapped the polished floor with the patience of something older than footsteps.

Under the earth the roots were dressing themselves.

They gathered threads of moisture and mineral whisper, stitching blind patterns through darkness. They wore the slow language of pressure and thaw. Spring was not green yet — spring was pressure. Spring was the long inhalation of buried things remembering light.

The sun traveled ninety-three million miles to reach us, but down there its warmth moved millimeter by millimeter, translating fire into softness. Stones loosened. Worms reconsidered their positions. Seeds opened their quiet mouths.

We walked as if we belonged to that underground procession — commuters of a deeper railway. Our faces blurred like reflections in passing windows. None of us entirely solid. None of us entirely late.

Somewhere the train would stop.

Somewhere a platform waited with no clock.

Until then we moved through this corridor of slowed light, wearing the patience of roots, dressed in the careful black of soil preparing to become spring.