- 13 - Fungal Body Thalia McIntire Maybe I should embrace the black mold. lean into it, you know, Allow it to the point where looking at me induces nausea. Let any eyes that lay upon me be glazed over with gray lichen in punishment for their crime. I could be a home for so much life, the spores in my lungs that wheeze when I speak, the worms boring holes beyond my eye sockets, the rats and rodents carving out a den in my abdomen. A corvid could make a nest in the space where my heart used to beat. I could be a walking reminder of mortality.