A Mythology of Poisonous Fungi
I held her hand until it was stone, until her temple became a cave, until nature razed her city, until a forest grew in its place. I wrapped myself in the blanket of her waning divinity. I plunged her love into my heart like the tip of a spear, and I bled and bled until a crimson river eroded the land and we became an island. I loved her so dearly it destroyed me. I loved my destruction because it rotted through me in the shape of her until the black tarnish of my soul was her silhouette. Too late to turn back. Too late for anyone to save me. If this last idol was all I had holding up the ceiling of my affections like a caryatid, I’d remember the face of my love when all the world had forgotten.
I laid at the feet of her last effigy. She was an unknown goddess known by only me. She became a mystery. And what became of me? I died the last cultist to speak her name in worship. Neither of us deserved this. Devotion was a two-way street. She had been a light the cosmos pitched into darkness, a black hole in the place of a gleaming star, and I was stuck in her orbit forevermore.
Dressed now in moss, wreathed in vines of kudzu, she stood like staggered menhir, and I expired eternally in her shadow, my undying adoration in an endless unlife. A rusted lichen diadem upon her head honoured a bygone reign. I remained prostate in steadfast reverence, withered in errant bows of graceless sunbeams. Trespassers marked my tomb in this tenebrous haunt, called my nameless epithet as though speaking to a ghost. They infringed on our intimate afterlife, disturbed the earth upon which we strode, plundered the artefacts of our past life, their footsteps soiling our matrimonial bed. We were still there, you heretics!
Her love was an unalloyed ecstasy. Her love was everlasting. Her love was the gift of immortality. Nobody ever warned me never dying wasn’t the same as always being alive. I would do it all again if I could. Even if I knew it would end the same way, I’d be the woman who loved the goddess until the heavens collapsed, until ruin befell us, until an apocalypse fashioned for two buried us. I surrendered my personhood like I surrendered my life, but I could never be nothing. I would never be nothing for as long as I clutched her love like a talisman.
All I became was decay. All I could give was my poison. No one could remove me. Nothing at all could consume me. I endured the maw of oblivion, and when it had consumed my toxins, it choked on its own ichor, and I returned. My mycelium anchored me to this place. My spores scattered, a deathly extolment, and my blood-black fruit issued a sombre warning. I would not leave. I could not be plucked. I visited death onto anyone foolish enough to try. I spread throughout the earth, a bitter notice of our once fervent ardour to all mortals who ventured into the shade. And as they burned from the inside out, they’d know us.
In my memories this was still a temple at the centre of her glittering city. She was still vital. Her voice was a song, her embrace a paradise, her beauty an unmatched wonder, and our life a constant joy. As a goddess she couldn’t truly perish unless nobody remembered her. I remembered. I couldn’t die unless she ceased to love me. I remained. As long as I remained, I’d remember, and as long as she was remembered, she’d love me. We ensnared each other, keeping the other from peaceful nihility forever. Nobody said true love was merciful.
