The Things We Cannot Say

.12.

Early spring is one of the busiest times of the year. It is the start of everything growing, when the earth is warming up and the soil loosens. The fields are plowed for wheat, sweet potatoes, ground nuts and vegetables. We are lucky to have a cow to pull out plough. Otherwise we have to borrow from the Chans and have to feed an extra mouth.

When the sea storms, and Father does not go to fish, he ploughs the land in the morning. On the ribbed earth, we plant seeds, bulbs, roots, covering them, moulding with soil so they bulge with expectancy.

When I wash my hands in the evening, I see the soil rooted in the veins of my hand, under my fingernails. I smell the earth even as I sleep.

In spring, I wait for the harvest that comes six months later, when the land brims with swaying wheat and
unruly potato creepers, when sacks will be as round as full stomachs and hard as rock. For vegetables, they are ready every two months and the waiting is stale. Things far away seem fuller, with every day they grow richer.

I often see sickles in the air, slicing through wheat,
wheat-beaters pounding into shafts of grain with mighty
swings; oats felled and pulled through iron teeth to separate the seeds; sweet potatoes upturned in their beds by ploughs, vulnerable to picking hands; groundnuts searched, always searched, with scrapes, coaxed out into the sun, into worn wicker baskets.

I see these as I weed, in their endless motion, because in the months of waiting, weeding is endless. It is a
morning task, to catch the young at its weakest, so that they may not sprout again, but maybe the uncertain way I pull them, hands slipping on morning dew, lets them live.

In the spring, I wake up when the light is grey, and lead the cow to pasture in the grass by the vegetable crops, near the mountains where land is a little higher. From that
place, I can see the sea, shadowy boats on the dark waters like resting insects in a pond. I can stare for hours at the motionless boats, I become like a seed, sleeping, waiting for
coaxing hands, waiting for the softest hands in the world.

Maybe Jungkooks'? I've touched his hands before, and they feel really smooth. If he held your hand, you would feel protected. If he put an arm around you, you would feel accomplished to have such a friend. His hands are warm, as if he's been sitting near a fireplace all day. It can give you the warmth you needed. It can provide comfort when wrapped around you, when he's hugging you, you feel like you actually have someone who cares about you.

I can only imagine this in the time of my cow's grazing and then I have to bring her back to the shed.

Without cowly noises, in the open field, I can hear heartbeats. First mine, then the echoes of many many heartbeats, from the earth, every bump a pulse, drumming.
Constantly drumming. Drumming from all directions, even the mountains. The half-hour before dawn is so filled with heartbeats that I cannot hear my own.

My grandmother says that at this time, we have to be sure of who we are, so we do not confuse ourselves with spirits, spirits ready to snare the fainthearted back to their world as servants. But what am I to do, with the name "the lost child"? How am I to defend myself?

Unless I'm with Jungkook, I am nobody. Unless I'm with Jungkook, I have no family. Unless I'm with Jungkook, I'm not loved. Unless I'm with Jungkook, I am an unidentified spirit, roaming around, not knowing about my existence at all.

So when dawn comes, there is a surprising silence. I am still here, and the dark boats on sea begin moving their insect legs, six with every stroke, as the sky brightens and the sea turns green. The village awakes and villagers appear from the gate, into the fields to weed. Some go to the sea, to
help with the catch.

//I hope these updates make up for what I didn't upload :)//