Mycelium at Platform Zero

Beneath the city, in a tunnel retired from trains, grow lights hum like patient violins. Shelves of oyster caps open their pale umbrellas where old announcements still flicker in the dust.

A worker in rubber boots mists the morning and the air answers with the smell of rain on stone. Commuters overhead drag briefcases across thunder, never knowing this soft republic breathing below.

Threads of mycelium stitch cracked concrete, white script writing its slow bright grammar. Even rusted bolts wear halos of dew, and silence tastes faintly of chestnut and iron.

At harvest, baskets fill like moons in eclipse, and knives flash once, clean as bird wings. By dawn the market calls them local produce; I call them night stars raised from rubble.