The Regeneration of Earthworms

On a Central Park footpath, a worm thrashes for its life. A robin slices off a section and swallows it whole.

I watch from a patch of spring grass, darkening in the sun, the damp sweet dirt pressing into my palms, speckling the glossy annelid’s burgundy skin; if it escapes now it could regrow itself.

*

Four years ago the earthworms drowned in the rain as the cells of the lump grew in my left breast.

Mom, Dad, each of my three sisters, best friend, second-best friend all chirped “You’ll be fine!”when I told them. The lie stung: they couldn’t know.

I waited for the biopsy results alone.

The earthworms lay white and bloated on the footpaths. Oceans of
corpses under my feet, interspersed with cracked acorns that would never become seedlings.

*

Fibroadenoma: “noncancerous tumor.”

*

Semi-safety. My cancer risk is now 1.5x normal. Swamp roses send their perfume on the breeze, the scent finds me and I savor their last bursts of energy before the petals fall. Their beauty lies in their ending.

The purple beech finishes unfurling its leaves nearby, opening their black plum beauty to the sun. As they unfurl they grow closer to turning brown — dying. The color is miraculous because it will end.

*

Four years of scar tissue has regrown in the gap left by the tumor, glossy. The nerves are dulled there. The numbness says Don’t forget.

*

Tourists block the robin. The worm escapes into the dark.

Savannah Carlin is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in JuxtaProse magazine, Sunspot Lit, and Feminine collective. She graduated in 2016 from Babson College and lives in Manhattan.