Wisdom from the Ground

I. 

I am lathered in dirt, but I am not blind. 

Like an octopus that sees with its skin, 

I see the answers to everything—  

There are scriptures written in the soles of people’s feet, 

and I’ve seen billions of footsteps;  

ones with long, languid leavings 

ones with short, skittish scampers, 

ones with uncaring cadences, 

clearly content to ignore that they carry with them all they seek. 

People mistake the eyes as the only organ with the power of sight, 

and when the feet of those people peruse the earth, 

their skin blinks shut— 

a final flutter of eyelids before death. 

II. 

Feet blindness means the wonders and misfortunes of the world travel through the eyes

and jam into the brain 

overpacking for a trip that will never make its way through the rest of the body.

That’s when people start begging God 

to show them how to free themselves from their fullness. 

or, at least, how to stop the fullness from leaking down their brainstem,  

intoxicating the stomach, spleen, and shoulder blades 

where the conditions are not ripe for refrigerating thoughts. 

III. 

People have stopped walking in the grass. 

They wear shoes because they are afraid of the truth. 

Or maybe they think they know the truth, 

like the truth comes from the eyes alone. 

Haven’t people learned that the mind alone is untrustworthy? 

People stay with abusers, wear high heels walking in New York City, 

and sit in front of a TV screen playing games, 

telling themselves they are not trying to escape their reality, 

just trying another one on for a bit— 

but they promise their mothers, friends, partners 

it won’t affect their relationships. 

Or their moods.

Or the amount of time they spend basking in sunlight,  

remembering that before electricity there was fire 

and before there were matches and newspaper 

people used rocks to create the same spark 

that people feel when they remember that their brains were made to process things,

and not to shove their thoughts into a 70 liter backpack 

that they hike with from their beds, to their jobs, to the couch. 

IV.  

It hurts—knowing people choose to ignore that their souls come in two parts.

The mind fills up like a balloon and floats away 

without something to tie it down to the ground, 

but I can’t hold anyone hostage 

or force them to face themselves, 

unprepared to have dirt fill in their lines of scripture 

covered with socks and shoes since birth. 

When they do face themselves, they’ll be able to read their feet, too, 

and realize they’ve wasted time trying to figure out why their heads were heavy

when they could have taken one step toward freedom right on their lawns.

They’ll resent the very feet that have shown me the soul is not abstract. 

It is the combination of the head and the skin, 

for the skin breathes everywhere, but it is most concentrated in the feet, 

to the point that words develop in the creases, cracks, and calluses, 

and they never get too full. 

There is space for every thought, desire, dream, goal, fear, sadness, and doubt.

And that is when people start thanking God for giving humans skin 

that repairs itself when it is splintered, sliced, and scratched, 

and feet that can open their eyes, when they’re ready. 

V. 

No—no two feet are ever the same. 

Neither are the scriptures. 

But there’s one major constant, 

thrumming like electricity behind a socket, 

and it’s that each scripture is a person's story of creation; 

Not the one from birth. The one that made a person 

fall in love with art, or baseball, or cinnamon, or another being. 

For each person is purposefully created to fall into themselves, 

carrying and gaining weight to be distributed and 

handed out to the body like the last supper’s bread.

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Gina Martucci (she/her) is a New Jersey-based writer and English teacher for students with learning disabilities. As a queer woman, Gina writes about stigma, religion, family, friendship and relationship dynamics, gender roles, and how they all impact one’s self acceptance. Her mission as a writer is to normalize experiences of otherness and give voice to the parts of people not widely accepted by society.