Ancient grains

It was evident already as a child that my palms were sticky with the past.

We washed millet, laid it to dry on the trampoline, ground it in a hand-mill. The flour was always too gritty, the seeds too small for our grinding stones, too perfectly smooth and round and whole. Ancient grains, my Mom would say, quoting a health book, and I’d picture the pharaohs and canoes on the Nile and birds dropping the smooth grains through the cracks of time, the hard truths of sustenance someone else learned first. The birds bring everything from the past: sunlight, fire in a potshard, an empire already sick. How often do we love a seed just because it survived?

I don’t belong in my own past. A white girl in northern Uganda scooping ancient grains between fingers and thumb, walking side-paths to the cathedral where her father donned red robes like wings. Her father, self-conscious and joking every week, becoming a scarlet bird. We’re given cracks in time: a sturdy box built by a grandfather two continents and one language away. A firefly in the sock drawer. Banana bread bowed in its crown by the weight of ancient grains.

We ground the purple spheres between two rocks. Sifted the flour, poured it into hot water. Mingled it over a cooking fire. Rolled enya between our fingers, scooped the pumpkin leaves, the beans. We ate the past. •

Marks from foraged inks I made over a year ago now - walnut and acorn and a weird berry.