Olya K-Mehri: The Soil Does Not Approve of What Is Happening Below

Some roots move like they’ve heard rumours of fire and want to meet it halfway.
They don’t grow—they lunge, they trespass, they take what the worms have left behind.
Last night I dreamt they stole the names of my ancestors and wore them like masks.
There’s a sound down there that isn’t earth shifting—it’s something deciding.
They wrap around bone only to listen for unfinished conversations.
No light reaches them, but still they squint—just in case.
A root once touched the buried shell of a doorbell and didn’t stop vibrating for days.
They learn direction from the silence of seeds that never opened.
What you call growth, they call escape.
They do not wait for rain; they invent thirst and follow it blindly.
Sometimes they split a stone just to hear what it was hiding.
There is no such thing as stillness underground—only waiting with teeth.
They do not care for your gardens. They remember forests like war.
Each one carries a secret it stole from the last thing it touched.
If you could hear them, you’d swear the soil was cracking jokes in a language now extinct.
When they finally rise, we will mistake them for something holy.