And all at once, the women of the land began vomiting soil. Oily soil, black soil. Wet, acidic soil that irritated the skin. Women kept terra cotta pots to catch the soil on the passenger seats of their SUVs or between their legs on the bus. Soil streaked their cheeks where they wiped away the soil after long, uncontrollable purges, like some strange makeup trend. Concrete planters appeared on street corners and outside supermarkets for women to dump their excess soil. It overflowed, dirtied the land. It was expected life would bloom in the soil but the soil was poisoned, and so what sprouted were bones. Thin bones like bird bones, hollow bones good for flying but too scant to support life, and so as the bones grew and branched, bird-like femurs and tibias bleached in the sun and snapped, leaving bone dust that washed into sewers, clogging them with their paste. The men fretted that their infrastructure was under duress. They issued municipal bonds for massive projects while pharmaceutical researchers administered drug trials to address the symptoms of soil delivery. A cure was never discussed. 

And why would it? Isn’t this what they wanted? Isn’t this what they expected? Why wasn’t anyone angry about it? Why didn’t anyone care?