[cracked] - Poorimole

“What reversal could there be for me?” Schmuel whispered to a passing earthworm. “I am a mole who remembers nothing but dark. My feast is roots. my mask is my own face.”

But that night, a child dropped a triangular pastry—a hamantasch—into a crack in the ground. The pastry tumbled down, dusted with poppy seeds like little moons. Schmuel touched it. Sweet. Strange. And for one moment, he felt not poor, but royal. He put a poppy seed on his nose like a jester’s bell. poorimole

Deep under the garden, where the old rose bushes tang their roots like forgotten prayers, lived a mole named Schmuel. He was called the poorimole by the other burrowing creatures—not because he lacked worms or tunnels, but because his eyes, two tiny black beads, always seemed to be weeping. Not tears, exactly. A kind of dampness, as if the weight of the earth above pressed sorrow out of him. “What reversal could there be for me