The Farm

By Peter Bowden

 


In the kitchen, the boy spread the sand with a spoon, slow and careful, the way his mother leveled flour before baking biscuits. The glass walls of the ant farm glinted in the morning light. He could see his own reflection, serious eyes, hair sticking up like he’d been thinking too hard. The instructions said to leave room for tunnels, so he made small valleys and ridges, imagining what the ants might call them: canyon, ridge, the great divide.

The ants came in a small brown tube, alive and restless. He tapped the tube gently and watched them spill out into the sand, each one already certain of its purpose. They began their work without hesitation, carving paths, moving grains larger than themselves, shaping the world beneath glass. He watched, fascinated, and felt a quiet respect, how they didn’t argue, didn’t stop to wonder who was in charge. They simply began.

By night, the boy’s lamp burned low beside the ant farm. He traced the tiny tunnels with his finger against the glass and thought about his own world; his school, his home, his place among friends. Somewhere in the hum of crickets and the distant clink of dishes being washed, he understood: life wasn’t about size or strength but motion, about making something, no matter how small, that lasted through the night.

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