Subway Mycelium

At dawn the station yawns open like wet stone. Commuters descend, each phone a small aquarium. Beneath the tiles, a pale parliament of roots trades news in sugars and rain.

Mushrooms lift their quiet antennas through cracked concrete, listening to brake-squeal, to the iron weather of trains. They remember forests we paved into straight lines, and keep the old map folded in the dark.

A child drops a tangerine; it rolls to the tracks, a sudden sun between gum wrappers and rust. Somewhere below, filaments flare with sweetness, a message passed hand to hand without hands.

By night the city thinks in neon and invoices. Underneath, the white threads stitch our footsteps together. While we sleep in separate towers of glass, the earth rehearses how to call us one.