Mycelium at Mile Zero

Before dawn, the subway mouth exhales iron rain. Under the turnstiles, moss arranges its green alphabet. Each letter drinks from a leak no map admits. The city steps over it, late, untaught.

Down there, light arrives as coins of amber falling from the train doors, brief and spent. The moss keeps every coin, threads it into velvet, sewing a small season against the concrete.

I kneel where advertisements peel like old weather. My breath fogs the tile; the wall answers with scent— wet stone, penny, leaf-litter after thunder— a forest rehearsing itself in a tunnel.

By noon the platforms thunder, and still it listens, a patient ear pressed to the rails of tomorrow. When night returns, the green script brightens again, writing: even here, root is another word for yes.