Ms. Chernobyl

Because I relate most to a fungus

Poem:

They say she was first seen

on the walls of Reactor No. 4,

not during the explosion,

but long after the fire had gone out,

when silence settled in like sediment,

and everything living had either fled

or been forgotten.

She wasn’t part of the plan.

She wasn’t built for this place.

But still,

she came.

A black mushroom

embedded in the veins Chernobyl,

drawing what she needed from radiation

the way others draw from sun or soil.

She didn’t ask if it was safe.

She didn’t ask if it was fair.

She just began absorbing

what couldn’t be undone.

And I wonder if she questioned it.

Not aloud, not in the way we do.

But in her own language,

the way roots ask

before they grip stone,

the way darkness waits

before it settles into shape.

Did she feel the weight of it,

the place,

the history,

the quiet that never ends?

Or was she simply there,

rooted before the thought of leaving

could ever exist?

She metabolizes radiation.

Not as rebellion.

Not as strength.

But as necessity.

It is what she was given.

So she turned it into something.

Not beautiful,

but real.

And maybe I’ve done that, too.

Maybe I’ve stood in rooms

I had no map for,

absorbing things I could not name,

until they shaped me

without permission.

Maybe I’ve become the kind of person

who roots in aftermath

not out of courage,

but because the doors

stopped opening elsewhere.

I’ve never longed to disappear.

But I’ve lived with the quiet clarity

that I am out of place,

a creature of soil and breath

trapped in a world of wires and windows,

where time moves like hunger,

and nothing ever rests.

Still, I take it in.

The overwhelm, the weight,

the unnatural rhythm of it all,

because that’s what’s asked

to keep moving,

to keep providing,

to stay tethered.

I swallow what was never meant to nourish me,

and call it a life.

But some days,

I find my way back,

barefoot in the woods,

skin to earth,

finally unspoken again.

There, I remember

what ease feels like

when it doesn’t cost anything.

And I think of her.

That dark-bodied mushroom,

still buried in the ash of a place

that asks everything

and gives nothing back.

She has no forest to run to.

No patch of moss to press into.

No sky unruined.

She will never know

what it means to leave.

She just stays.

Takes in what should never have touched her.

Turns ruin into sustenance

because there is no other option.

Because she was shaped for the place

no one wanted to remain.

She will never know green canopies

or the gentleness of distance.

She will never be anything

but necessary

and unseen.

And still,

she stays.

I admire her.

Not because she is strong.

But because she is honest.

Because she does not pretend

this is what she wanted.

She exists.

She transforms.

She bears.

And for that alone,

she changes everything.

---

This piece reimagined as a song using Suno (lyrics are mine).

---

Lyrics:

Verse 1
They say she was first seen
on the walls of Reactor Four,
not when the sky was screaming,
but when the fire wanted more.
When silence sank like silt,
and oxygen turned strange,
she rose — uninvited,
to feed where nothing stayed.

Pre-Chorus
She didn’t wait for mercy,
or ask the ground to give.
She drew from what was deadly,
just to learn how to live.

Chorus
You can call me Ms. Chernobyl,
built from fallout, wired feral.
I’m rooted in ash,
made for the aftermath,
turning poison into pulse,
when the world won’t turn back.
I carve myself from decay,
a creature of the ruins,
making dark feel like day.

Verse 2
A black-veined body,
forged to endure,
absorbing what’s vile,
what no one can cure.
No sunlight to follow,
no map to unfold,
just the weight of a history
that’s always cold.

Pre-Chorus
No forest calls my name now,
no refuge left to find.
I root inside the hallow,
where the light fell out of time.

Chorus
You can call me Ms. Chernobyl,
built from fallout, wired feral.
I’m rooted in ash,
made for the aftermath,
turning poison into pulse,
when the world won’t turn back.
I carve myself from decay,
a creature of the ruins,
making dark feel like day.

Bridge
Some days I break away,
barefoot on the ground,
remembering a language
that doesn’t need a sound.
But she will never leave this place,
no sky to understand,
a creature built for ruin
with no gentle land.

Breakdown
Take it in — don’t let it show
Breathe the ash — let it grow
Turn the wound into a home
Even if you stand alone

Final Chorus
You can call me Ms. Chernobyl,
built from fallout, wired feral.
I’m rooted in ash,
made for the aftermath,
turning poison into pulse,
when the world won’t turn back.
I carve myself from decay,
a creature of the ruins,
making dark feel like day.

Outro
I stay.
Honest in the ruin,
alive in the gray.

---

Author's Note:

This piece began in someone else’s Substack thread. Another writer, William Lower , mentioned the Chernobyl mushroom, a real fungus that not only survives in radiation but feeds on it. I hadn’t heard of it before, so I did what I always do when something intrigues me: I fell down a research hole.

I learned about this black, melanin-rich fungus that grows inside Reactor No. 4, quietly metabolizing what should have destroyed it. It doesn’t resist the radiation. It transforms it. It draws energy from the aftermath and continues existing where nothing else can.

Something about that undid me.

I kept thinking about what it means to live off what broke you, to find a way to draw life from what should have ended you. That mushroom didn’t get a choice in its environment, it simply adapted. It didn’t rebel or rise above; it absorbed and continued. There’s a strange, brutal honesty in that.

The poem came quickly after that. I found myself writing about the mushroom as if she were a woman, *Ms. Chernobyl*, an embodiment of endurance without glory, transformation without applause. The kind of survival that doesn’t make you stronger so much as it makes you real.

Since writing it, I think of her often, the way she roots in devastation, the way she stays. She reminds me that sometimes survival isn’t beautiful, and sometimes healing doesn’t look like light returning. Sometimes it’s just the quiet act of existing in the ruin and making something pulse again anyway.

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**Don’t worry, everything’s still free.

I’ve just decided to treat my writing a little more like busking.

There’s a tip jar out now, you can donate if something I’ve written ever stuck with you, but there’s zero pressure.

Honestly, even better than donations?

Restacks. Shares. Comments.

That’s the currency that keeps the cage alive.

From the cage,

Canary Vale 🪶

Poemsbycanary@gmail.com