Subway Mycelium

At four a.m. the city is a rinsed shell, streetlamps humming like jars of captive bees, and beneath the rails, the dark soil listens with a thousand white tongues of rootless thread.

Mushrooms lift their paper lanterns in the median, small moons glazed with rain and diesel, while buses kneel, breathing at red lights, and puddles memorize each passing window.

Under the concrete, messages travel without sound: sugar, warning, weather, the taste of rust. The map in your pocket cannot find this country, but every fallen leaf is fluent in its grammar.

When sunrise combs copper through the station grates, people rise from stairwells carrying coffee and grief. No one sees the bright net stitching us together, yet all morning we walk on its patient music.