Ten weeks after you died

Already you are moss-shrouded

dew-cool and sponge -thrumming

willow-bone and mushroom-tooth

muttering through mycelium

alive so expansively

that a beating heart is hard to find

whispering between bark cracks

with grief-ached tongue

and responding is someone

is kin is someone is friend

is lover with limitless hands to lie in

root-cradled like rhizobium

can no more speak the language

though I kiss the dirt trying

push fingers through membranous mud

coat brown every inch of skin

covered in the filth of body-quickened earth

willing soil to unspool soul

rattling root / trunk / branch swift

as thought through synapse -you-

compressed and compressed

distilled and bursting

swollen at the tip.

Fruit and seed.

This poem placed first in the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Competition 2024, and is due to feature in their forthcoming anthology in 2025.