We stepped out of the ocean onto the shore. Lava barely hardened crunched under our toes and turned our feet black. Then we kissed trees with our palms and our tears, weeping salt from our skin and licking it from each other’s lips. Then came the blossoming, progeny, something we can only understand through exploration. They say we were so eager to return to that from which we came that we broke tree branches with our fists and sewed them together with blood to make ships. They said we needed to conquer, to return, to proliferate. But they don’t know the whole story. We stayed on dry earth, and went further inland, learning how to feel grass whistle between our toes and uprooting it to know where it comes from. But we, we are from the sea, we are people of basalt and black beaches and brimstone and saline sweat. To find our roots you could pull and pull but you would pull the other side of the earth through itself and only then hold our roots in your hand: the world.