Waking up is easy; the feel of good earth on my tongue, gritting against the white of my teeth is like a thousand stinging kisses, the scrape and rasp of it jarring through my bones, reminding me of my connection to the soil, and all it promises. My father says I am a natural at being reborn; he has never seen someone take to it as I do. The dozens of others he has planted never spring back up in the moonlight, and even if he digs down to help them, they have withered to white worms, and their eyes are sunken and hollow.
Not you, Nazarene, he sings to me. Not you. Your hands seek the sky and your toes seek the hollow wells of roots and the dark talkings of the insects crawling in the dirt, whispering of the destinies of seed and secret, and all that will one day come of the earth.
Every bedtime is the same, and I love the lullabyes he sings me as he settles me down against the soil, and pillows my head on the moss. I’ll see you in the silver light of your mother, Nazarene, my moon-child. Come awake, come alive, my precious one, and dance with me in the dark. No matter how many of your brothers and sisters never dance with us, we will dance for them, atop their beds, their worm-ridden unending sleep, and you will grow to seek the sky and the earth as one.
