Revisionist Poetry – “Host of Decay” – Growing, v.2

In my dreams, I wake inside
a ruin that is still alive.

Fungus threads through me
like a patient wound.

It begins in the brain—
a soft blanching,
a fog in the thoughts,
spores settling where memory should be.

Then it works downward,
slowly, intimately,
into the joints,
into the hollow ache of bone.

I feel its silent patience,
its pale multiplication.

It does not hurry.
It knows I will.

By the time it reaches my belly,
I have begun to understand
the shape of surrender:

not a blow,
but a blooming.

And in the dream
I am no longer whole—
only a body
being taught to decay.