There are earthworms dying on the brick pathways which cross-cross the quad of my campus. Earthworms stranded on the bleak, evenly-spaced, crevice-filled blocks, their pattern marching on and on. People walk, strolling up and down and zigzagging and stretching into corners of this vast grassy plain that's been sequestered in ordered pathways, boxed into individual squares. They do not see the earthworms; they do not see the unpleasant. They stomp on the helpless in order to avoid looking. They want to progress, these people. They want to move forward. But do they know where they are going, or are they marching just to be in line?

The brick is dry; the sun is hot. The earthworms squirm without moving. Do they know that they boil, or do they only know pain? Do they understand the need for soil, or do they only know fear?

Have you ever been afraid?

I have.

I am afraid when I go to bed at night that nothing will change;

I am afraid when I wake up that everything has.

I am afraid when I eat dinner that the cacophony of sound berating my eardrums is not that of voices in the room, but voices in my head.

I am afraid of drowning.

I am afraid of not being enough.

I am afraid of disappointment.

I am afraid of others.

I am afraid of you, because I don’t know you yet;

I am afraid of me for the same.

I am afraid of love, because it ends, even though it’s not supposed to.

I’m afraid of life…

Sometimes it’s difficult to get out of bed;

Sometimes it’s difficult to get dressed.

In order to get dressed, you have to look at yourself.

You have to peer into a mirror and make eye contact with the person who knows it all.

Sometimes that’s really hard.

But there are earthworms, earthworms stranded on the pathways of my quad,

And I might not get there in time to scoop ‘em,

They might die, squelch into the crevices and become the substance of a footprint,

But every once in a while…

I see them, wriggling and squirming, searching for moisture, searching for what they can’t find, searching for what they don’t understand.

Have you ever been a worm?

Unsure, disoriented, afraid?

Have you ever needed a push, needed a hand, needed a friend?

There are earthworms dying at your feet, on your path.

Will you stop?

Will you save them?

Will they save you?