A strain of white mushroom grows here by pushing through the difficult soil, as its mycelium spreads laterally. It catches moisture from ephemeral droplets before evaporation forces those to lift from the ground, condense into clouds, and climb over the mountains to provide for greener life.
You think of your dog eating the mushroom’s soft flesh and you kick its fruit off, burying it under the broken flagstone in the yard: Now you won’t kill my dog. Push it further into the buggy, colder dirt.
You are reckless; the mushroom might not even be poisonous. You feel stupid and violent for destroying it, though you know another will pop up soon.
You understood survival before moving to Albuquerque from Minneapolis, drunkenly on the edge of 21, thinking it’d just be for a few months. Now half your life. You wipe your hands on your jeans, still squatting, observing the miniscule animals under the flagstone, and thinking of the 90s when, barely a teenager, you scurried in the dirt, rooting for sustenance. Spent your time among and learning from others who knew the human formula for surviving most cities, most climates. All lived under stone too, an ecosystem beneath bridges. A network not unlike fungus, with aliases like Critter, Creature, Worm. Squawker. Lord of Squakees. Nothing.
Most of the others were two, three, four times your age, but that didn’t matter. You were part of the same webbing, drunk along the tracks, hopping trains and one another for free rides before sleeping in those places. You also slept at your dad's party house. Or else at your mom’s glowing holy home. The only demons there were those that followed you in, you were told.
You cover the living dirt now with stone, shivering under warm daylight.
Minneapolis is a flat city, drenched. This landscape’s inverse. Everyone thinks water is a boon, especially when there is none. But in snowy, iced-solid winters and then summers nearing one-hundred percent humidity, water can be as unbearable as desert sun, as inescapably intense and profuse. You ignore it to persist, as one tries to ignore other unpleasant things that swarm.
Minneapolis is also relatively wealthy, and for many who live there, this is a benefit. It has a lot of nice things like museums and vibrant social programs that lift up both individuals and communities. Those parts of town are reasons to stay, unless you were born to vacant parents, or parents riding devil-horned scapegoats into heaven. You were landlocked inside yourself there. Now you sigh and step away from the flagstone crumbling. That funeral prayer: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You feel your heart beating, hard. About to panic.
You wander through more plants, envious at their brilliantly adaptive structures, their spines, their armor.
How has the past lived in your body so intrusively, even without accompanying memories? For more than twenty years, you’ve had to survive thoughts of surviving. It’s a fear that does not match your surroundings. What was the point of leaving that city if it will never leave you? Still fresh from days ago, your mother’s words intrude: You would have been dead, at least twice, without my prayers.
You look around for other potential poisons—more mushrooms, venomous spiders, toxic plants. But can’t find anything.
You feel 14 again. And try to focus back on the plants, their thriving. They tapped into water bound to microscopic earth particles. Magenta will grow out of their eating from the ground. You know how to do this. You made your way here and found food in the desert, a way forward. Then why do the biblical floodwaters still embody you? Why did you leave the ancient ice scars, the meltwater that transforms itself to a landscape so glimmering it blinds mothers and fathers against their own leaking despairs? You made your own home. You care for people and for creatures. You have always cared better than anyone else ever could, for you. You can still feel grateful for help along the way—breastmilk, learning the backs of butterflies, summers at the lake, tracing veins of maple leaves and of mother’s hands, libraries, ice skates. Grateful for one safe place.
You cannot keep saying, “Good job.” You cannot keep saying, “I forgave you long ago.” You cannot keep begging, “Please don’t go back there, I can’t survive it.” By now you know futility. You’ve chosen ignorance to accommodate hope. And you have done this despite knowing that unlike the native plants, transplants are supposed to have their roots cut a little.
Pull yourself up and start trimming, but be careful. Not stupid and violent.
“the meltwater that transforms itself to a landscape so glimmering it blinds mothers and fathers against their own leaking despairs?” Wow!