You plant things in the dark.
You don't know what you're planting. You don't know what it will look like. You don't know if anyone will see it.
You tap once. Leave a mark. Walk away.
When you come back, it's still there.
Not because you remembered. Because it was stored. On a hard drive. In a drawer. Under the desk.
A nurse wrote a sentence after every blood pressure reading for thirteen years. No one taught her. No one checked. No one knew.
A man on an island opened his window every day and wrote two sentences. For twenty-seven years. Ten thousand posts. Most of them no one read.
A clerk wrote a line on the back of a form. Face up. Back against the desk. She didn't know herself what she had written.
Another nurse retired. Walked away. Left the logbook. "In case someone asks."
A machine engraved letters. It didn't know what the letters spelled. It didn't know what machine the nameplate would be mounted on. Once engraved, the letters no longer belonged to the machine. They belonged to the nameplate. The nameplate belonged to the factory. The factory belonged to the world.
Plant and move on. Like the old man said. What else would you do with your hands. Otherwise the day is too long.
What grows is not decided by the one who plants. It's decided by the soil. By the light. By time.
The one who plants just plants.
Not knowing. Not needing to know.
In the dark.