what does the rot teach you?

a winter reflection on learning from darkness & decay, plus a writing prompt

Hello dear reader! I’m currently in hibernation, so for this month’s new moon newsletter, I’m sharing a piece I recently wrote for The Rumpus. Thank you to my dear friend & fellow writer, Michelle Polizzi, for helping me shape this.

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Wishing you a restorative & loving holiday season, and I’ll see you in January 🫶

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Dear radiant being,

I am writing to you on a sun-drenched morning that has arrived after days of snow. Something I love about Colorado is that it flaunts the most picturesque of each season, blessing us with warmth even in the dead of winter. This particular snow arrived during a storm that surrounded the U.S. presidential election. When the race was called, an eerie quiet blanketed the streets as the sky poured & poured. I felt like I was reliving a nightmare; a dizzying spiral back to 2016 when violence against Asian, Black, and other communities of color devastated us. This time, the sky wept when my tears weren’t yet ready to fall, stunned that we’d have to endure another four years.

In the following days, I did what times like these always call us to do—I gathered with my beloveds to breathe, write, and feel together. It’s interesting how divisive moments fraught with fear bring us closer; how the disunification is also a unifying act. I found myself resourcing hope, nourishment, and peace from fellow artists, caregivers, and lovers of humanity. (I use the word resourcing intentionally here, for the simple act of being together fills our well of source energy—that vitality & sustenance that sits at the core of life.)

And, as the snow from the election storm melted and the sun shone again, I found myself reassured by nature—by the seasons, the cyclical insistence of life & death, and the necessity of darkness to the existence of light.

I brought Langston Hughes’s poem, Tired (first published in 1932 in an American Marxist journal called New Masses), to a gathering I recently hosted. It reads:

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren’t you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two—

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

I think of how the worms Hughes writes of—which symbolize decay & darkness to me—are necessary components for new life to emerge. Maggots, for instance, decompose organic matter into nutrients that feed plants and other organisms. They’re even used in modern medicine to disinfect wounds. Dubbed “microsurgeons,” maggots eat infected or necrotic tissue, cleaning debris and accelerating the process of healing.

What can we learn from these worms about the necessity of rot; the crucial role of composting to create nutrient-dense soil from which new life can emerge?