Mold

December 2025

Mold rots the mind  
like the way you feel  
as alcohol floods your body 
it creeps, it seeps,  
it pollutes the soul and thought.
Mold strips the foundation clean,  
a quiet undoing,  
till it teeters to collapse. 
Hidden in the body’s corners,  
in the drywall of belief
it floats unseen,  
and we breathe it in with our hope 
unbeknownst to us
then we falter, we fall ill.
No one tells you how hard it is
the scraping, the bleach,  
the starting over.
How expensive it is
the toll on our body. 
Some of us carry mold  
the way others carry love,
silently,  
as inheritance.
It eats, yes
but it also makes way
for something new.  
Good mold flavors the world too
ripens cheese, fattens soil,  
turns rot into sustenance.
If we see only the rot,  
we miss the opportunity 
for resurrection
for fresh beginnings. 
Mold is an alien organ,  
yet wholly of the earth.