Queer Mycelium Network | a poem for Brianna Ghey

Brianna Ghey, a 16 year old trans girl, was murdered in a park in northeastern England on February 11, 2023. You can donate to her funeral costs here.

When one of us dies, we all feel it 

3 am and miles away we were awake in crumpled sheets of violets

and she was sprawled on the midwinter grass

her wounds blooming like petals into the day
the spring barely a morning

Jennifer told me how grass cries out when you cut it

inaudible, beyond language, an unheard distress signal

I wish the grass beneath Brianna screamed louder

before her body fell into it 

I wish the pistils of every violet lept

to catch her and the anthers would bind the gashes

We talk about the network that connects us

filaments that send energy the way mushrooms

feed each other underground

tiny threads make an ecosystem of memory

we are here, woven into

the queer mycelium 

I felt Brianna die this morning 

the wet grass under my neck

my ribcage unrising

I have no water to send her

Let my poem be a burial shroud

warm braid wrapped around roots

We will pull her back to the filament