What Holds

I pulled it up

and the whole architecture came with it—

tangled white threads

like someone's hair

at the end of a long day.

Everything that holds us

has to break to be removed.

The soil clung

in small clots.

The carrot itself

barely weighed anything,

just weight the roots

had convinced me was there.

What keeps us in place

is so much more than what grows.

The invisible part,

the part that doesn't get eaten,

the part that works

in the dark.

I held it in my palm

and thought about

what I'm pulling from

every time I leave somewhere,

every time I choose

to grow in a different direction.

The threads were intricate.

The threads were fragile.

The threads had done

all the necessary work

without asking to be seen.