Belly-down in humus, searching for my keys,
I found moss breathing through stone—
a thousand years of Sundays
in one green inch.
The mold had already eaten the log hollow,
black rejoicing, wet triumph,
its spores screaming look at me, look at me
while it turned to powder at first light.
I know that hunger.
I've been that gorgeous rot,
that overnight success story
feeding on my own foundation,
spreading till I was everywhere and nowhere,
famous for fifteen minutes
in fifteen cities,
alone in all of them.
But the moss—
the moss was fucking married to the rock.
Till death do us part and then some.
Growing so slow it was basically still,
so still it was basically eternal.
I have cracked ambition over my knee,
scattered it like kindling on the forest floor.
Let someone else's fever burn with it.
I'm done combusting.
Now I grow where no one's looking—
in the crack between Tuesday and Wednesday,
in the pause after someone says "I love you"
and before you say it back,
in the damp shadow of the fallen log
where the moss teaches stone to be soft.
The mold makes tomorrow's headlines.
The moss makes tomorrow's earth.
One inch. One year.
One cell teaching the next cell
the only sermon that matters:
Stay. Grow down. The surface is a lie.
By the time anyone notices moss,
it's already become the world.
By the time I found my keys,
I'd already decided
to grow so quiet
you'd have to get on your knees
to hear me breathing.
