Those summer afternoons at the farm, when even my siblings napped in the rooms with cracked walls, snails were my companions. I squatted to watch them crawl on the parched soil, on the lustrous leaves of the asparagus patches. Their movement was imperceptible yet happened. With that singular muscle, they went places. I envied their calcareous shell, its fine coils. I did not know how easily it could crack under a child’s careless foot. They did not talk, those creatures, but the frantic quivering of their tiny antennas moved me to tears. We belonged to the same tribe, those snails and I, quiet, persistent, brittle carriers of secrets.