When you left and left this room forever, the mushrooms - companions, advisors, lovers - remained. Not yet knowing that their thin filaments were watching me and their suffocating spores were resting on me, I remained like an orphaned child between the bitter sheets and the cheap mattress. Holding my legs around my chest, I stared out the window, where the wind was blowing the branches of a tree back and forth. I smiled at the coincidence, the one where for moments the sad branches intersected forming a weak and thin cross.

You used to watch me contemplate the trees, which for me had always been evidence of the sacred in life. Look at them, I used to tell you. Really look at them. Look at them with respect. Trees were for me little gods, little Mercuries that conveyed a simple message: perfection. Their thick trunk pointing to the sky and their thin branches, where the little yellow flowers grew, always followed a patron saint. That's why I look at them, I admitted to you. I contemplate the trees because they seem to contain a perfect sequence, I told you. The trees repeated their sequence at different scales, the thick branches shot upwards followed by the small ones that always followed the same direction and order. I, like them, wanted to lengthen myself, sacrifice my body and in my sweet conversion, embrace the infinity of the sky with my thin branches. Those days, my body was prostrate on the bed; but I was not there, I jumped from one branch to another, I walked the bark of the tree. I was no longer a woman, but an ant. I was no longer a body, but an exoskeleton. In my lack of humanity I grew little antennae and abandoned this race, replacing my shoulder blades with wings.

As long as I lived watching the window, I had ignored the heavy humidity that was generated in the atmosphere. Discomfort. Coughing. Fever. These were the reasons for staying in bed. The humidity didn't bother me, on the contrary, I considered it a gift because my body would rise up and, approaching the fogged glass, I would draw with my fingers the silhouettes of the trees, similar to the ones out there. And in some of those days, seconds, minutes that I lived between reality and dream, the mirror on the wall fell, such an atonic grade bursting into melody. One by one, I lifted my face, arms and legs, approaching with heaviness the mirror -the one that reflected you every morning- and when I tried to lift it, I realized that on the wall where it was hanging there was a big black spot. Like a survival instinct, which was just being reborn, I covered my nose and quickly opened the window. Finally, I noticed it: spores. The atmosphere was full of moisture and spores. I laughed. You had given me a book that was becoming prophetic, how long ago did you give it to me? It was a corpus of fungi that, in the face of my frustrated dream of studying biology, became a convenient replacement. This blob in front of me was a fungus belonging to the species Alyposis Corberius. The poor species was prone to extermination, since, in the slight presence of humidity, it took possession of human walls, molded itself to them and, forgetting itself, became the wall itself. Foreign and comfortable, it would stretch through the houses, running along the floors, leaving a thread of spores in its wake. And I, I who had read about this species, I who knew about its attraction to humidity, had not minded being surprised by the humidity of the room, I had not minded living among fungi because deep down, fungi had been my companions. Consciously it was grotesque to me, but unconsciously I knew that between the bitter sheets, the fungi had listened to me and, in spiritual purity, had named me.

You see, before my little knowledge, I remembered reading that fungi, just like our brains, were able to form a communication network . A fungus, similar to a neuron, extends its filaments looking for another fungus with which to communicate in order to transmit information and adapt to the environment. (And I, when I extended my taut fingers to grab your arm, wasn't I looking to survive, wasn't I also extending my filaments looking for fusion - communication - with you?). This ability of fungi to communicate led some scholars to hypothesize about the possibility that they are conscious. Think about it, if our neurons by communicating with each other make up our brain, don't mushrooms make up a kind of brain by also communicating with each other creating this wonderful network? Perhaps, rather than observing a black spot on the wall, I was observing a mind. You were gone and, in response to your silence, a consciousness had begun to plague my walls.

I gazed tenderly at the stain growing towards the ceiling, my small eyes raised to see even the thinnest branches of the mushrooms. But I couldn't stay, I stood up and with a sudden dizziness I leaned my head against the wall where the spot was. We know each other, I whispered to the mushrooms. You have met me, I told them. I saw the mushrooms as little rivers that, like my blood streams, leaked holy water. But I couldn't live with them. Of course I knew, I couldn't stay there -- here -- my lungs would slowly give in to temptation and, among so many spores, my skin would cease to be flesh and turn to moss. I was, after all, a rich soil for the growth and reproduction of these fungi. The water flowing inside me was a source of moisture, and my organs, holy ground to conquer. But I couldn't live with them, and I knew it as my right hand held a container of bleach. Would I be able to kill a mind? If I didn't do it, someone else would. Shouldn't I be the one in charge? I who had been observed and known by these fungi. And after killing them, what would be left of me, what would be left of you? You who were also known. You who were also observed to leave this room forever.

Do you remember when we stood in front of the sea? That time we felt our true human frailty as we danced among the sharp waves. I searched in my old closet for a towel to pour the bleach on. Remember when you plunged into the icy water and came out smiling? If the sea wanted it, you told me, she would produce colossal waves to bathe us with them and infect us with her salty thirst. I took the soaked towel to the wall and rubbed part of the stain with it. You were right, the sea, our mistress, could claim us if she wanted to, it was naive to want to control her. And while I continued rubbing with tears in my eyes, I noticed how the black stain disappeared from the surface of the wall, but underneath it a faint shadow could still be distinguished. I smiled, the fungus was still alive. I could spray the walls with bleach and the fungi would recover, they would heal from my cruel act and once again dominate their reclaimed spaces. The mushrooms hid the strength and beauty of the sea. And at that moment I felt I was looking into your eyes. What don't you see, I said. I am only a woman and this does not depend on me. I dropped the bleach whose toxicity had only managed to burn my weak fingers. If they wanted it that way, the fungi would grow on the walls, on the floor and on the ceiling, and I would not be able to stand against their will. That's how they are: unstoppable with a mysteriously immortal strength. They have known me, I sighed, bringing my burnt fingers to the grayish surface of the stain. I have known them, I brushed the spores belonging to those who had so patiently watched me. They have known me, I repeated.

I searched through the dampness of the closet for some clothes and drying my wet body with a towel, I went back to dressing as a human. While I submerged my arms in my coat, I watched the arms of the fungus reappear in that area that I had tried to erase with bleach. They have known me, I repeated as I left the room and watched the black ramifications cover the walls for the last time. They have known me. I left and walked to the tree I watched every day from the window. I brushed its bark. I looked at its branches, I remembered the mushrooms, I remembered you.

I coughed loudly and small particles of spores escaped from my breath.