Not Too Old

Old enough to remember watching the first man walk on the moon from her black and white TV. Old enough to remember newspapers delivered at both breakfast and dinner, years before any internet. Old enough to remember swimming when lakes and ponds reflected the sky’s blue rather than muddy bottoms’ brown. The old woman watches from a closed window in a temperature-controlled room. She wonders about bees and fireflies, songbirds and bats, air and water. She strokes her arm, speckled with sunspots and scars, then drops to her knees to yank out a metal box hidden under her bed. A box of oatmeal and honey and waxy paper. All to breed wiggly wax worms. The old woman isn’t too old to have a hypothesis. She’s been experimenting with wax worms under her bed, cultivating them to consume plastics and emit healing magic. The old woman isn’t too old to have a plot in the community garden, where she releases wax worms to chew up debris in the soil. The worms gobble microplastics from chip bags, plastic straws, and cigarette filters, releasing their superpowers—saliva infused with enzymes to oxidize the plastic’s polyethylene. The old woman’s sorcery spreads hope throughout the soil as wax worms burrow beyond her plot to the next and the next, producing bumper crops of tomatoes, zucchini, and kale. Maybe it’s just the worms and not the old woman’s spells. Maybe Mother Nature can heal herself. The old woman isn’t sure, but she trusts her theory that even Earth’s Mama can use a helping hand. So, the old woman watches, wishing for bees and mosquitoes to return, ponds to clear, and birds to thrust out their breasts in song. She waits by her window, searching for a double rainbow, a dove,  an olive branch.