You are my sunshine (a haibun)
by Alison Dyer
So I registered with Ancestry dot com. Turns out I’m seventy-three percent plant. Which explains a lot. Like the storing of carbs for a long winter. How in the dark season I recoil from other humans. Hide under snow white blankets. It’s an evolutionary miracle really. That nightly respiring. And now I’m unfurling, feeling the air as never before. Today, I’m soaking up the sun through every stomata of my being. Do you know I’m monoecious? I’m the very first trans plant. I’m actually photosynthesizing (this is so more satisfying than ribs on the barbie). I’m producing. Me. A primary producer, a giver of life!
I’m going to miss the gadding about a little. All my news now delivered by word of mouth, by the birds and the bees. Still, I’m thinking about pairing up with a fungi. I know. It’s not a new idea, but I feel deep down in my carpels we could find some real symbiosis. Say the ‘love until decay do we part’ bit. The idea is definitely growing on me. Bring on the sun.
Solar faced newbie
seeking mycorrhizae with
mister right, fungi
Alison Dyer is a writer, bushwalker, expedition kayak guide, and permaculture practitioner. Her debut poetry collection I’d Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game, Breakwater Books, won the 2019 E.J. Pratt Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Fiddlehead, Riddle Fence, Grain, Grimm, the Nashwaak Review, 3 Elements Literary Review, Feathertale among other literary journals and several anthologies. She is currently working on a poet’s trail guide to her island home, Newfoundland/Ktaqmkuk.
