I wish I could say something like, the first time it touched me, it said it was going to love me whole, and I shivered. But it never said anything at all.

Your skin is so soft, was the first thing I said to you, a pulse of chemical electrics. I sat, warm in the palm of your hand, and you could not hear me. We were not yet connected. So I began to grow.

I didn’t want to let go, even after I saw the vining mycelia slotting into place alongside my blood vessels. I began to wear gloves, even in the gnawing heat of the spring, and felt it absorb the damp of my sweat, the sweetness. Felt it thrive.

I had no lips to cry out, but I did anyway, sending waves into your bloodstream, making your muscles twitch and jump in my rhythm. It took a long, long time for the echoes to return, and I would gasp at the size of you. To spread my spores, I had to bring you to your knees. But not yet.

My muscles, moving without my consent. I felt it like a new set of ligaments. When I was alone, gloves discarded, staring, mesmerized, wonderstruck, at the way it penetrated my palm along its grooves and lines, my abductor muscle undulated, and, before I could think, I brought my hand to my mouth.

The growth was soft. I worked my mouth over it, first lips, then tongue, then teeth. I was careful, so careful. A bit of it got into my throat. I didn’t notice, the moment overwhelming me. My lumbricals contracted, as if to hold my face. A lover’s touch. My own hand, not my own.

I shuddered as you rent me with your mouth-bones. I had never felt a touch like this. The palm-self pulsed, to clutch you, draw you closer. I have your senses now—what did I smell like? Did you know the difference between you and I? Were we yet indelible?

You put me in your throat, and I latched on. Reached down, and down, and down, and found your lungs. Your stomach. Reached deeper in. I found your spine.

I found myself awash with sensation, helpless as it grew and grew and grew. From my palm, up my arm, into my shoulder. Across. From my throat, up into my larynx. I wondered, wondered if it would ever speak to me. I felt it latch, I felt the threads with each breath through my voice-box. I hoped. I hoped. I hoped.

Some days I sat for hours, watching it drop the pen over and over again. My hands shuddered. I spent some nights curled like a leaf in a bud. I dreamed a threaded mass attaching us, umbilical. It pulled my spine, my central string; I went taut.

When it threaded through my jaw, between my teeth, and wrapped around my uvula and tongue, I gasped. My hand, resting idly over my stomach. We moved it down, it or I. The thing we were becoming. I was the one to disrobe—how would it know the zippers and the buttons? But I let its blind, exploratory pulses move my fingers.

Every day, I learned from you. I learned from your tendons and your ligaments. I learned from the marrow of your bones, which fed me full. Learned from your beautiful, supple organs. I did not learn the words inside your head. But I could hear you. I wound myself around you, permeated. You were my biggest prey. My most beloved.

I heard your organs begging, and I answered. I slithered over your facia, sunk mycelia into the deep, red meat. Your organs bled for me. I felt, up in the throat of you, a moan. I studied the way your larynx moved. I reached up for your mouth. I wanted to feel that, too.

You brought our hand down, into familiar damp. I felt the slide of fabrics. We moved together, over your skin, and under. I breached the uterine lining, then descended, stroking muscle cells through their walls, feeling fresh dampness on our fingertips. I felt your brainstem. In the instant of your orgasm, I locked you out.

I could do nothing but stare. I could do nothing but feel. It fucked my organs lovingly, and I felt each strand, each devoted invader, linking me into itself, taking my mind out of the loop—it took me over. Achingly.

I wish I could have moaned, or stretched. I wish I had a way to say I love you, fuck me deeper. Like fingers on my liver, over the whorls of my intestines. Beyond painful, to the other side.

The roadblock at the base of my neck. I could not move, no commands to my limbs would make them stir. Locked in my skull, I whimpered, spasmed, groaned. It moved my lungs. It pumped my heart. It needed me to live. Air in-out-in. I wished that it would speak.

I wished that I could hear your brain articulate, that I had more to go off of than just the slickness of your flesh, its shuddering. I had never slid into a mind, had never tangled up the neurons. It was daunting. But your body said enough.

I turned our head. Pressed our mouth to your skin. My body spilling out, twine. I remembered when you ate me, gave me access. I used our lips to touch each part of you. You would not have to climb. You would just have to fall.

It brought me to my knees. It felt like silk on the cells of my muscles, tying me tight. Careful. It was gentle, it was soft and smooth. It ran my mouth along my skin, and I remembered. Air moving across my larynx. No sound. Just breath, and the soothing way it beat my heart.

The blood kept flowing through my head. The air kept going, out-in-out. My muscles slithered as it pet them, arching, a pleased cat. Bound, brainlocked, I floated. It figured out the ways to pump endorphins up; transmogrified each deeper growth, each novel filament, into a spark, a microcosmic supernova.

I said, with all the ways I have to speak, I want you to feel pleasure, only that. I said, I have eaten deeply from the soil of your body. You have been good to me. I said, Sweetling, I hope you do not die. I said, Love, my love. Womb, entombment. Bearer of my child. Site of our rebirth. I said, I hope you know. I hope you knew.

It closed my eyes. It brought my palm to my face. It bit, and bit, and bit. Clean through to bone. I would have laughed. I would have come. It moaned for me, in place of me. I felt it tickle my brainstem. I wish it dared to tread into my grey matter, to fuck me in my final bastion. I felt the fruiting bodies open.

As our spores coated the dirt, as I breached your brain and took that too, I asked, Did you love me?

As it twined with my neurons, as I died, I wish I could have said it back. But I couldn’t say anything at all.