By Clairen Rae Cook
I bend low, knees creaking lethargically, the genetically failing tendons stretching, straining, aching. The dew coats the soft june grass, the rubber soles of my shoes—the petals of the red flowers effervescing to my right are bejeweled, besotted with it. I reach one chilly hand towards the rock, eyes trained on the almost neon green rebellion growing before my eyes. The lichen, a delicate doily, spreads its thin lace in rolling ribbons. Roiling folds. It unfurls each morning, dew droplets seeping into the innermost sanctum. Dew quenches the parched algae, hermiting away from the unforgiving star, the desiccating drying death above. The sun. The fungal cortex wraps its protective arms around its algal partner, cradling it tenderly, preserving it in the heat of the day, in the simmering summer. And in return, alga gingerly assembles the robust but food-failing fungi’s next meal, fiddling with the water, the air, forming palatable, succulent sugar. Tucked in together, team-tagging, tandem, touching. I ponder with reverence their intimate connection, each offering all it has and finding that in conjunction, there is enough. I stand, joints protesting, throbbing cries fighting to be heard. A crimson hope blooms inside the y-shaped cardiac muscle cells of my heart, fed by each electro muscular spasm. They are enough. The broken, the weary offer up all they have. Together there is enough.
