The Worm Lives

I woke up this morning, shuffled past the coffee pot that don’t perk quite right anymore, and stared into the face of my past—plastered all over the walls like a museum curated by a sentimental raccoon.

There’s an old Polaroid of Gerald “Tooth” Miller from when he tried to start a canoe rental business on Johnson’s pond. That lasted two weeks, tops. Turns out canoes sink when you patch them with duct tape and optimism.

Tooth always smiled like he knew something you didn’t, which usually meant he’d done something he shouldn’t. But I liked that about him. I still do, wherever he is–probably in Arizona. Or jail.

Right next to that hangs the lopsided oil painting I made of my dog, Roxy, in ’05. It was a birthday gift for a friend, but they took one look at it and said Roxy looked like a goat with mange, and that was that.

That’s when it hit me. My house is a shrine to memories nobody else remembers. I started pacing, slow at first, then with a purpose.

Each wall told a story. Each shelf groaned under the weight of objects that meant nothing to anyone but me.

A taxidermied bass I caught with Uncle Adam the day he got electrocuted by a fence he didn’t see comin’. A cracked teacup from Aunt Barbara’s cabinet, which she swore was used by Eleanor Roosevelt—though it’s more likely it came free with a bag of flour.

I felt something low in my gut, like an old worm that had slept too long in the dirt. You know that feeling.

The one that says: what’s all this for?

Not in a sad way, but in a way that asks whether you’re the man you set out to be or just a man who collected a lot of junk on the way.

I pictured dragging one of those big metal haul bins up next to the porch, maybe spray-painted orange, so the neighbors knew something serious was happening. I’d open the window and start chucking out all of it.

The broken clock that never ticks. The letters written to me. The high school yearbooks. I imagine the satisfying clatter as it all landed. Lightened.

But then I thought about the worm again.

He’s a stubborn old thing. It lives deep, likes the dark, but always stirs when there’s movement.

He’s the part of me that keeps scratching at the surface, that still believes a good story is worth telling, even if only to myself. He’s the one who says, “Don’t toss it yet. There’s a memory in that mess that still needs finishing.”

So I sat down and had a bagel with cream cheese—the good kind with sesame seeds.

Outside, the morning light curled over the fields like an old dog settling in for a nap. Everything looked just as it should.

And inside, the clutter stayed. Not because I couldn’t part with it. But because it’s not junk. It’s the trail of breadcrumbs back to who I’ve been.

Maybe someday I will rent that bin. But not today.

Today, the worm lives.