If I undug a hole I dug before, then is it two holes or just the reunited one? It was a large hole with dry mud crumbling at its edges, all perfectly round and deep enough to swallow the morning clouds whole. I thought about the hole weeks before I dug it and weeks after, but as I chipped away at the ground, I thought nothing at all. I suppose I ‘thought’ about the wind and the rain, the sun and the half moon, crescent moon, absent moon, crescent moon, and a half again. No. Rather, I watched it all happen before me. I was audience to the parade of dust leap out from the cracks of the droughted dirt as the dripping fingers of the wind took hold of them, and when they were so heavy with the damp of the rainy season, I saw them wobble in place. But with the shovel in front of me, I say not much.

Someone told me once – you know who – that when one hikes there is an unspoken code of conduct. Think of it as a rule book for those crawling over the space where traffic cones wouldn’t be able to sit without sliding down the green. If you’re climbing up a trail, you have the right of way due to your limited field of vision. You’re looking down to your feet and not up at the sun, the peak, or the crowds of people ahead. But groups often take precedent either way as forcing six people to stand aside is much disruptive. Bikes yield to everyone and horses to no one, but if I looked up to see a bike hurdling towards me, I’d probably step aside no matter what way I was headed. This is all tangential though as it is the wrong direction entirely, and I’m not a mountain person. I don’t enjoy altitudes higher than where I am right now. I visited a two-storey building once and it made me uneasy and thinking of the twenty-storeys above it makes me nauseous. When I’m unlucky I see planes flying overhead.

This all makes sense logically. My feet were made for the floor. I can see it in the wet ground when I step back on the ground that I once dug, and when I can feel the earth sticking to the soles of my shoes. I still visit the site, but I don’t dig there anymore. It’s somewhat of a monument for me. Anyone else I’ve shown it doesn’t really get it, or they appreciate it without understanding and comprehending it. But who else can really understand it but me? Even if we are the same, DNA and spirit and soul, those were my version of our arms digging it. Those were my eyes looking down, and my feet lodged into the ground. It doesn’t upset me because I can understand that much.

But I’m not the person I was when I dug that hole. It was before the dirt had seeped so much into me, and I could still see with the whites of my eyes shining. I’m not the digger I once was, and my dream of digging to the centre of the earth to chew on its gooey core is little more than a pleasure-seeking fantasy now. It’s too hot, and if that nectar were to get a lick of the open air, it would harden to grey rock as well. Best not to tamper too much with that corner of my delight. I’m not one to chase loose threads in the wind. When I dug, I only looked down, but sometimes even that came with a surprise. In the reflection of the shovel on a clear night I could see a flash of the white moon somewhere above me. But have you ever seen a shovel? I’ll explain it as a long wooden pole with a metal mouth to bite up the soil, but that mouth is rarely ever perfectly flat. There’s a ridge right down the middle where the pole joins it, and sometimes the corners are upturned too. So, I never looked up to see her, but the moon still found me if she was out in some capacity. All I ever saw was a moon halfway pulled out of the soil and halfway buried in the worms. Two holes in one, I would joke to myself. I’m sure out of the reflection of my shovel on her end, she was also seeing another half in me.