Work Text:
I am an off branch of womanhood, something too tangled and wrong to bear any fruit or flowers at all. I don’t understand how to be a woman, I don’t know the first thing about being a woman. I am not roguish, or pretty, or strong in the ways a woman can be. No matter how much I try, no matter how long I observe or how much I try to twist myself, I’m still an off branch of womanhood.
I bear no fruit, and if I ever did it would be nothing but noxious poison, something that kills whoever dares to consume it. The flowers are wilted and decaying, only mold makes their home among them. I attract no hummingbirds or bees, I never had a need for them anyway.
I cut myself from womanhood with vindication, with self-serving viciousness until sap sprays from the cutting and stains my hands. I listen to the cries of “Foolish one! You’ll never escape!” and I am no longer at home among lofty branches with the screeching cries of the women who think I have wronged them.
I lay on the ground and know that I have not wronged them at all, merely done something they thought was unthinkable. I have removed myself from their tree, I have turned into an unknown beast the women fear for they do not understand. That’s fine with me, as I rot into the soil.
I rot into fungus, dreadful and deep rooted, I feast on the remains of womanhood and the remains of the branches and boughs, I learn from the women who were rejected and those that have passed. I tailor their knowledge into sustenance for me, I spread my roots far and wide. There is a place for the mold and the toxins, for if anyone removes me, they will die right with me. There are others, a system of mycelium that begets survival and understanding, other fallen branches and rocks pulverized into dust to feed the soil.
I learn from the men who stand as stones, I learn from the ones that were rejected and those that have passed, and I grow upon their knowledge and tailor it for me. I am on the outskirts, I become the moss on the stone. I’ve carved out a space in manhood, half on the edge of the organic and non. The men cry that I am not welcome, an interloper upon their grounds and I spread my roots deep into the earth. You will never remove me, I tell them, I’ll crush you if you try.
They can do nothing as I grow, as I spread the moss and roots so far and deep that they’ll never be rid of me, so that the women can see what I have become, and the people like I rejoice in survival, in adaptation.
I am moss, I am fungus, I am the rot that forms the base of man and woman, for these concepts are not sacred to me. I desecrate them anyway, I twist their meanings and combine their values, I am a beast that devours it all and relishes in the cries of those who are afraid.
I know nothing of being a woman, I know half of being a man, an amalgamation of the highest proportions and none of you can stop me, none of you can look me in the eyes and not know that I will outlast you, that I will be here when you’re rotting and I will be here when you are green. There are others like me, we have always existed this way, and you will not remove us.
I am the moss and fungus. I am the beast you fear. You will not remove me.
I will crush you if you try.