The Soil Remembers

Layered beneath our feet lie the ages and eras that once were.

Memories buried atop memories, lost to the waves of time, so we could make our own. 

But the soil remembers. 

The leaves we watch fall once thrived in a world where death was not their end. They had not yet ingrained themselves in the cycle of life. 

In their discarded state, they lost their appeal to those around them— No longer a source of sustenance or color. 

The branches that birthed them no longer claimed them, for it was not the way of their time. 

And so the leaves were disowned. Discarded without correction, direction, or explanation. 

Yet nothing consumed them. Nothing destroyed them. Nothing addressed them at all. All hoped they would simply be lost to time. 

But the soil remembers. 

Dirt and sand, water and rock, Fire and ice. Time and circumstances changed, 

Appearances shifted. Spring brought new life. New adaptation. Evolution. Innovation. 

And with it came new problems, needing new solutions, new energy. 

And the soil remembers. 

The forgotten remnants of an era past under the weight of progression transformed inside the soil, becoming the fuel of the era made new. 

What was not destroyed was remade in the soil. Embedded in the ground where life takes root. 

But the leaves have forgotten what it was like to be forgotten— discarded but not destroyed. Bodies trampled, blood spilled on the soil…

Ages rise and fall, 

But the soil remembers.

(Inspired by a passage in Tananarive Due’s “The Reformatory”)