Spongos The Love Fungus

Short Story

If I was a bouquet I would be a fine garland of weed, something called Sticky Monkey or Purple Cake. At least that’s what Olly told me. I think Olly’s right, but I don’t think I’d be flowers. I think I’d be a fungus.

I stumble across my own mushroom mind
There is comfort in the maze of madness
Inside I come to terms with what I find
Failure of reality; a slackness

Olly’s lips are soft; a blockchain of marshmallows compressed, repeated, and shaped perfectly for mine. Our first kiss was the first chip at reality. A tender peck in the alleyway before the incident. There’s a violence to love I wish more people spoke about. It comes in waves and then all at once. A tsunami of emotions wiping away all sense of reason or reality. I trace my way through the maze of memories recalling the day. Memory decays over time you know.

We had planned it perfectly. I’d be the lead and Olly would come in after holding the gun. Or was it the knife? I just remember the sheer amount of blood. Blood everywhere. The quiet was eerie. I feel like there was screaming. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was just in my mind. Maybe… maybe Olly’s hand on my waist made everything settle into absolute calm. Memories decay.

It is clear that I am unraveling.
Well, falling in love can have that effect
I know by the spores in the air cuddling
A survival tactic not a defect.

We never talk about the day. It exists in the space between our bodies when we are pressed together passionately. It exists in the space between moans or the pauses between kisses. I love Olly and that’s the problem. Olly loves me too and that is also the problem. The thing is we communicate it in ways that are unspoken; that our love is a problem. We are two mushrooms communicating through mycelium. Small electrical impulses when we touch. There is very little to say when you speak in spark. The words we actually say are whispers.

If love is organic matter whisper
To me all the ways I can consume you
The ways you’ll be happy–never bitter
We’ll kiss, a tribute after we argue.

“I wish we never did it,” is whispered at 2 am when we’re both too high or drunk to really have the conversation we need to have.

“I’d do it again. I’d do it again for you,” Is the only answer. It lingers in the air a confession and a damnation.

We squeeze each other tightly. Pretend the electrical signals were never shared.

Our love will survive the darkness tell me
Fungi don’t need the sun. Stay and you’ll see.


How long before guilt dissipates into nothing? Do I feel guilt at all? Does Olly feel guilt? We settle into the relationship anchored by mycelium; rooted but not quite roots.

I want to stumble across my lover’s mind.
Is it comfort or a maze of madness?
Will I ever come to terms with what I find?
Two mushrooms weakly connected; slackness

How long before guilt dissipates into nothing, into the love? In the morning after the whispers Olly is always more gentle. An extra caress, a lingering kiss on the nape of my neck. Hands trailing down my back like a feather across the face of the teased. It is a begging of sorts. A request to stay together and rooted in the feeling. The passion. Maybe it is best to run from the feelings. The possibility has begun to rear its decaying face more frequently.

It’s unclear if we are unraveling
Well, sharing love can have that effect
The silence leaves no room for cuddling
A survival tactic not a defect.

“Do you regret it?” whispered at 5 am.

The only answer is tears. It might be the loudest thing that has ever happened between the two of us. It is screeching; a disruption to our silent signals. We are two heterotrophs; feeding off each other’s decay.

Love is not organic matter you whisper
All the ways I have loved you consumed you
The taste of your kisses now so bitter.
There’s no dispute about it. Why argue?

I think I would prefer we argue. I want to know what you really feel. Do you hate me? Do you hate yourself? Are you bitter? I want us to remember that we are two separate people. We can make it. We CAN make it. Should we?

“I love you.” Whispered over breakfast at 7:13 am. Fried plantains, sauteed mushrooms over eggs, mango sliced; the knife still close.

“Olly I–”

“You?”

“Are you happy?”

Olly stares with the eyes that pin me to walls and strip me bare. I think about those tender hands that caress but kill. Tender hands that slice mangos and linger on my back. The answer is taking time to sprout and in that time I think about what I really want.

I want to never think about digging graves at 1 am or the stench of rotting flesh or the guilt or the adrenaline after it all or the shower we took together scrubbing hard or the act or the anxiety or the fear or the look in your eye or the sex after—hungry and thirsty and feral and disastrous. I fear that we are too deep into each other. I fear that maybe we are the type of mushrooms to last for days and not millennia. I want you to stay. I think I want to stay. I think of their grubby hands on you and the way you felt. I recall when it was grubby hands on me. The weakness, the violation, the humiliation. I think that fucker deserved it. I think we have to accept it. Let’s bury it too and move on. Tell me, I need to know.


Our love might survive the darkness tell me
we’re people not fungi. Stay and you’ll see.

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I submitted this piece to a competition whose prompt was to create a piece that was a hybrid of two types of literary genres. As someone who writes both prose and fiction, I thought it’d be a great challenge to try to create a piece that mixed poetry and short story. The challenge was really about finding a way to make the poem important and valuable without making it distracting. I ended up writing two sonnets that kind of operated in a way to highlight or comment on sentiments expressed before or after the stanza. Sonnets are so rigid so it was a fun writing exercise.

I chose mushrooms/mycelium as a way to express the shared experience despite them being two different people because mushrooms can communicate through chemicals (short version check the link for a full understanding). They’re interesting because they could be connected miles away and have a whole relationship underground that is often not visible to the eye. I thought that was fascinating and kind of mirrored the way human beings communicate with body language, pheromones, and how our subconscious picks up on things even though we aren’t aware of it. I also chose mushroom because they are extremely resistant and can survive extreme conditions like darkness that many plants cannot which reminded me of some relationships that manage to navigate dark and disturbing things but still continue.

Did you realize that the bolded bits were part of a sonnet? Was the transition between poetry stanza and paragraph smooth for you or did it throw you off? What line struck you the most?

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I’ve decided to continue to start my pieces with no introduction. I would like to capture the feeling of opening an anthology and landing on a good story. I feel like an introduction no matter how brief can significantly change how the work is perceived and how people interact with the writing. If you can’t afford to subscribe but want to support my work you can do so here.

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Read some of my other pieces here:

1. Humbleness Is A Luxury I Can't Afford
2. Food
3. Life is for consuming
4. Black Business: Blackness, Rejection, and How Wealth & Whiteness Works Against You Because It Worked For You