Chestnut mushroom by Emma Allardyce
(After Selima Hill)

I want to be a chestnut mushroom,
and not my mothers keeper.
I want to regrow when I get stood on
and blended with the earth
I stand in.

To be picked and enjoyed in a risotto,
To be useful without ever tiring,
To fertilise my ground, clearing
the death and dark sludge my roots draw from,
Only for no one to notice.

Chestnut mushrooms aren’t worried for.
They are adequate.
They can’t get things wrong
or falter
from the weight on their shoulders.

Mushrooms don’t have shoulders.

No hands to shake
No knees to wobble
No eyes to well up like the morning rain
No smoking mind with 14 warning lights on
one speed bump from complete combustion.

Mushrooms don’t have to suck in
to a skirt a size too small,
Mushrooms don’t have to face their own
ugliness,
They can’t feel the air leave a room
every time anyone asks how it is
because no one asks mushrooms
how they are.

I don’t want pity,
I want the precious veil,
protecting my spores,
to remain intact,
So I may continue to be,
the chestnut mushroom that everyone needs,
But nobody cares about.