A Place Where Mushrooms Grow

 

Roses were never within her

Just the cloying fragrance of Lilies 

Emanating from every pore and ethereal breath 

Moss befriending her like an earthly blanket

Comforting her cold, dead bones

Flesh decaying to fertilizer

for sprouting fungi: 

Tempting flavoursome morsels of meaty bouquet

 

Take one, whispers the breeze

 

Persuaded by gentle winds that prickle skin

His trembling hand delves deep into a cavity to pluck 

and place

upon his fleshy, damp tongue

Cavity to cavity

He masticates his sins

Wants to spit

Wants to vomit

His head spins

Feels like

He's

       Stumbling

                      Down

                               Stairs

                                        Right into the folds of the earth. 

Where only dead things seep

 

There's a fractured window

He sees her broken image: Small, pink, heaving lungs breaking free of fluid

He pushes through, glass shatters

She's there in every shard, growing

Baby, child, teen, woman

Alive, dead. Dead… alive!

Each shard now possessed by her reflection

A finger. A tooth. A breast

An eye

It stares

Oh! How it stares! 

He's crawling

Digging, trying to flee

But the soil is so, so soft

A bed so comfortable, she has made

Just for him

He's scrambling, then running

Behind, 

the shards rattle into form

he sees the sky

So blue, so radiant in the grasp of the golden sun

It's her sky, he knows that now

 

An expulsion of breath

 

The knotted face of an old oak tree regards him kindly

Its arm creating a cavity within his chest

A lovely, glistening cavity for beautiful, meaty mushrooms to grow.

 

The shards of her, cast iridescent beauty upon him

 

And she begins to cultivate her newly acquired land