Poorimole -

He began to dig upward. Not to leave the earth, but to leave a small tunnel open—just in case, next year, the child dropped another crumb of joy.

“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.” 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. He began to dig upward

And Schmuel, the poorimole, wept—not from sorrow this time, but because even in the dark, someone had looked for him. “I am a mole who remembers nothing but dark

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.

Above, the child whispered into the hole: “I see you, little mole. Happy Purim.”

Every year around the month of Adar, when the humans above spun noisemakers and dressed in costumes for Purim, Schmuel felt a strange stirring. He would dig toward the surface—not to emerge, but to listen. He heard the story of Esther, read aloud through the soil: a queen who hid her people like seeds in her sleeves, a villain who fell, a reversal written in scrolls.