The Soil Beneath Our Feet

When I was seven, my cousin Tunde and I spent an entire Saturday digging in the corner of my grandmother’s garden. We were convinced that if we went deep enough, we would find the roots of the world. We hit old bricks, rusted metal, and once, a small, smooth stone that looked like a tooth. We didn’t know then that we were playing on top of layers of things that had been forgotten. To us, it was just dirt, a soft stage for our plastic soldiers and imaginary wars. We didn’t think about the people who had walked there before us, or the quiet weight of the earth holding onto the past. We only cared about the sun on our necks and the way the soil felt cool under our fingernails. Now, I wonder if the ground ever grows tired of holding us, or if it finds a strange comfort in the noise we make while we are still here. Does the earth remember the silence of the things it keeps, or does it prefer the sound of running feet?

Aakash Gulzar has taken this beautiful image titled From Graveyard to Playland. It captures that same strange, heavy grace of children claiming a space that has seen so much more than they ever will. Does it make you wonder what stories are buried beneath your own favorite places?