The Grip of It

by Jac Jemc

I finger the soil, scraping, unpacking, until it’s fresh and loose, and I begin to work my fingers into the earth, get my hands buried deep enough that my wrists feel the cool soil, and let them stay there, feeling fixed in place, grounded, until the chill resolves, and my hands have warmed the earth around them and I feel the dirt go to mud, and it takes a huge effort to pull them up, and the first thing I think when I see them is that these aren’t my hands.

It is sentences like this that made it really hard to get into this book.