Phraselet No. 37

With the first bite of the spade into the earth, there's something different, juicier, lumpier than it should be. When I turn the soil, giant pearls fall out of it; some roll away; others, split by the blade, gleam white and wet in the starlight: tiny potatoes, no bigger than quail eggs, thousands of them. They're grown so thickly, I have to not so much dig them as sift the soil out from smong them with my hands. I eat one, and it crunches like wet stars but tastes like sweet earth. It needs no salt or softening; it needs nothing but a mouth that's ready.

- Margo Lanagan, "Earthly Uses," Black Juice