Mycelium Under the Station

At two a.m. the last train exhales iron breath, and silence pools between gum-dark pillars. From a crack beside the yellow safety line a white thread lifts, listening.

Beneath the tiles, a slow republic of roots passes news in pulses softer than rain. Coins, cigarette foil, one lost earring become bright weather in the fungal dark.

By dawn the bakers unlock their floury doors; steam climbs the stairwell like a hymn. The city thinks it wakes by alarm and traffic, not by this underground lacework of hunger.

When my shoe taps the platform, it answers. Not in words, but in a cool mineral chord: everything fallen is being translated, everything broken is learning to feed.