The rift tore open, and you dissolved
flickering beneath a separating veil
your shadow bled on cosmic floor.
I licked sharp static from my fingertips, tasted
a world you do not know. One single set of
footprints in magnetic snow.
Perhaps we might brush shoulders on a dying star
where space trash crackles beneath our backs
and black holes hum your endless name
Not just the echoes of it.
I watch you fly in every comet
an afterthought in every world lost
at the edge of mine.
These constellations of regret
throw strange shapes across the night
when somewhere, you exist - full-boned,
leaping, not just pieces of you, somewhere
atoms practice form in gatherings
of dust.
The Interview
I had fun one evening writing a thing about chickens for COOP zine. It’s now published in zine #10! It’s the very first piece of writing in the zine, which you can download the digital edition of here. I do recommend you check out the entire zine, as it’s rather lovely.
The interview process at the chicken hatchery is peculiar. Marvin is asked if he can spot a perfect egg by sight alone, an impossible task, but he’s willing to try. He is quizzed about the number of feathers on an average hen, and then asked to navigate a virtual chicken coop where he must collect eggs while dodging hyperactive roosters. He’s then required to present a report on the ethics of free-range enclosures, to which he responds with a pie chart and a haiku. By the end, he is strangely confident. He shakes the interviewer's hand with the certainty of a man who has seen the inside of an industrial-sized incubator.
As a child he was fascinated by chickens and their quiet productivity. They were always there in the background, soft clucking weaving rhythm into his summer days. His grandmother had raised chickens in the backyard, and every morning, Marvin would collect the eggs, cradling each like it held a secret. He learned that chickens are ancient creatures with access to wisdom beyond his reach. He learned that they are stubborn, curious, and perpetually hungry.
He wakes from dreams where his chickens ask him questions he cannot answer - of their fate, of life beyond the fence. As the sun rises, he goes to the coop and imagines the sky lifting them as if they might one day take flight. But they don't, of course. They peck the ground, dust rising in small puffs around their feet, clucking in a language Marvin is almost certain he’s starting to understand. Sometimes he wonders what they see when they look at him - guardian, predator, or just a piece of the horizon.
Trolls and spiders and things that go bump in the night
I haven’t been writing a lot lately because I’ve been doing craftsy stuff.
Earlier in the month, Kindle Arts held their annual masquerade ball, and it was the biggest joy being part of the team who made it happen. This year’s theme was Transmogrification: Into the Gloaming, and as well as helping set up and tear down, my contribution to this was the creation of the Troll Hole.
I spun this idea out of something I saw at Dustcovery in Vancouver – a giant, human-sized hummingbird feeder, where you can drink sweet tea using a straw out of a huge feeder. I wanted to create a little space where people could play at being something else, and thus the Troll Hole was born.
The shell of this is a pop up tent that’s designed for taking showers in when you’re out camping, which I made a slip cover for using thrift store sheets. I then bought a second hand RV foam mattress, and viciously attacked it with a bread knife to hack off pieces that I could use to round out the tent form and make it more stumpy. I got a pile of thrift store blankets, and using a combination of upholstery-style sewing, E6000 for fabric, and a bit of hot glue, fashioned together this lovely soft stumpy hole for trolls of all kinds to reside in.
There is a clear sign on the hole. Do not feed the trolls! But perhaps that’s more a suggestion than a rule. I supplied gummy worms anyway, and a friend with great culinary talent provided a citric acid magic mix to make them super sour. I also obtained a number of fabulous vintage troll masks (all from this one guy on FB marketplace who was very intrigued about the “troll party” I was planning) and a variety of troll-based literature for bibliophile trolls to peruse while in the hole.
Right at the last moment, the day before the ball, I realised that the hole was a little flimsy. The pop-up tent I had built the structure around was not designed to have a lot of heavy stuff hung off it, and I worried that people might collapse the hole while climbing in and out. Thankfully my amazing partner came to the rescue and constructed a skeleton out of an old broken canopy he had lying around in his “scrap metal pile” in our back yard. I’ve often cursed that pile for looking so messy, but I was glad as hell we’d hung onto that canopy, as it created a very sturdy frame. I am forever in awe of his ability to fashion practical things out of junky nothings.
At the ball, early in the evening, people were curiously amused by the hole, but nobody seemed to be getting in it. I worried that nobody would understand the full troll experience I had envisaged. But as the evening went on, the hole became very well-populated! I had a few people tell me that it was a nice space to have a sit and a cuddle with a loved one, away from the hustle and bustle of the party. One group thanked me for giving them a “safe space” to “trauma-dump” about their past relationships with each other! Many people enjoyed the masks and the books, and my 2 tubs of gummy worms were completely empty by the end.
This whole process has bought me a lot of joy. The world doesn’t provide many places for adults to play, but I believe that play is so essential for helping us express ourselves, get to know each other better, and be a little different from the ordinary, for just a little while. I also have quite a love for small cosy spaces, I think because as a child I used to make hidey-holes in my parents’ airing cupboard among all the towels and clothes there, so this project has allowed me to share a little of that small-cosy-space-love with others.
I’m planning on bringing the Troll Hole to festivals in the summer, and I want to keep improving it. Next on the agenda will be plushing out the inside of the hole to make it super cosy – I want to create some foamy panels I can attach inside, possibly with some EL wire or fairy lights sewn in.
The pull of new projects is also enticing. I have this idea that I’d like to create a kind of womb space for contemplation which has poetry inside it. I’m also thinking a bit about interactive walls and textured fabric panels with pockets and surprises in.
But for now, I am taking a break from crafts, as I’m pretty crafted out. Over December/January, as well as making the Troll Hole, I made this fabulous spider/facehugger inspired mask from scratch out of wire, paper mache, paint, glass aquarium rocks, and literally thousands of rhinestones glued by hand…
And I also made a jacket for my partner, and six big signs for the masquerade that I hand drew or cut out of vinyl. It’s been an intense crafting period so now I’m resting and getting back to writing. It’s cold and I’m ill right now, so the opportunity to bash out some good words in a blanket in front of the TV is pretty welcome.
Thanks for reading!
I’m seeing things I can’t explain since my stay at Briar House
I’ve flipped lately from writing a lot of poetry to writing horror short stories, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it.
I wrote something recently on /r/nosleep, and it was picked up and narrated by Youtuber The Grim Reader. It’s very cool to hear how another person paces and interprets my words.
I’d love to hear any thoughts on this—as a brand new horror writer I really appreciate any encouragement or constructive criticism!
If you haven’t got a half hour or you’re finding the pacing a bit slow, listen to it on 1.25 speed.
Housebound
October 16
The house is cocooned in a fog so dense it feels alive, pressing against the windows. I smear condensation from the windowpane, searching outside for definition or edges, but everything has dissolved into a void of gray. The air inside is stagnant, heavy with silence. The refrigerator hums a solitary note, anchoring me to a reality that feels increasingly distant. I haven’t seen the neighbors for days now; shadows flicker behind their curtains but evaporate when I dare to look. Loneliness warps the space around me, bending the air into unfamiliar shapes.
October 17
The fog has lifted, but what's left behind is worse: complete silence, total stillness, and I am a frightened creature with blood rushing in my ears. Footprints snake around the house. The kind of steps that drag, like their maker was injured, or hesitating. They terminate at the porch, the last impressions pressed deep into the mushy grass, as if someone stood there for hours. No letters, no junk mail, not even a flier. The door remains unknocked. The sky hangs low, heavy with waiting.
October 18
The power flickered and died in the early hours, but that’s not what woke me. It was the scratching, a tentative rasp at first, escalating to relentless claws raking against the walls. I lit a candle, but its flame cast shadows that twitched and contorted into monsters. I went to the basement, thinking I’d find signs of rats, but there was no sign of anything. Just empty air thick with rot, rising through the dark, wet earth beneath my feet. I set traps, but nothing came—nothing I can see.
October 19
I think I dreamt—the walls bled in the dark, sluggish rivers of black seeping from the ceiling and pooling around my feet. I wanted to scream but I couldn't catch my breath, I was pinned beneath the weight of the house itself, or something far greater. I woke sweaty and shivering, my fingers caked in dirt. I scrubbed it away under the sputtering tap, but some mycelial quality of the soil still digs into me.
October 20
The air is full of swirling dust, infused with a scent sweet and rotten. I knocked on the neighbors’ door. Nothing. Silence answered me, and yet, through the wood, I heard the faintest rustle. Something shifting. Or breathing. I should leave—I packed a bag—but even as I switched the ignition I knew the sputtering engine would fail me. As I turned back, the house loomed larger, its windows like unblinking eyes. How long has it been watching?
October 21
More footprints, pressed half an inch deep into the earth, circling the house in tight, predatory patterns. I've sealed every door, every window, but I know it doesn’t matter. The walls are closing in. The silence is punctuated by groaning, rasping under the floorboards—a sound of wood and nail, the house murmuring in a tongue I don't understand.
October 22
The voice is unmistakable now. It whispered my name last night, maybe from just outside the window. I didn’t dare move, didn’t breathe, but I heard it close, curling through the air like smoke. This morning, a dead bird lay on the doorstep, its body grotesquely flattened, bones protruding through mangled feathers. There were no footprints this time. Only the stench of decay rising with the dawn.
October 23
Another dream—I was buried deep beneath the walls, suffocating in the damp earth of the basement floor. The voice was louder there, echoing through the bones of the house, inviting me to come closer. A part of me wanted it. I woke again with muddy nails, my throat raw as if I’d been screaming. Memory blurs; reality feels porous.
October 24
The power is still out, and the house is darker than it’s ever been. The neighbors are gone. I went there today, walked through their empty living room, wiped the dust off their little porcelain dogs. Their food is still on the table, their coats still hanging by the door. A noise upstairs startled me and I ran back, but it didn’t feel like running away. More like running toward.
October 25
I haven’t slept. The walls are full of scratching things digging out, or maybe in. I hear my name called with a lover's inflection, full of hunger. My hair hangs in tangled clumps; I don't remember how I got the scratches that snake my arms. I don’t remember anything, really. The house inhales, and the air that moves through the halls takes my breath away. The walls pulse with growing need.
October 26
The house swallowed in the night, and the windows are gone. I know they were there yesterday, but now it’s just walls—endless, blank walls. I can’t leave. I tried. The doors don’t open any more. I don’t know where the keys are, although maybe I never did. The voice swells within the walls, a cacophony of whispers and wails. It demands an answer.
October 27
Last night, the scratching was inside the room—or perhaps inside me. It's almost a relief that I'm not alone. Space has lost its meaning; there are no corners, no ceiling. Only unending, breathing walls that ripple with color when I look away. Exhaustion weighs down my body, and I fall into sleep like drowning.
November 3
There is no house, but now I know its language.
Photo by Nastasia Makfinova on Unsplash
Stag beetle
The beetle, named not for doe-like grace
but for those jaws jutting from its head
like battlements, like weapons poised
to maim. I have never seen a stag beetle
fighting, or rutting, embodying its name -
only watched their ponderous paths
through leaf litter, shining in plate armour
at the feet of sycamores.
These stags are jewelled scarabs
to a ten year old. Ancient people made gods
from them. This one, still and hollow,
I too make immortal. Curved bronze,
metallic umber shine in clouds of cotton.
Jaws cradling daisy heads,
entombed in my matchbox.
Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash
Fluffy Frog, Famous Frog
Check out this frog I knitted! He’s a cutie, right?!
He is quite tiny.
I have wonderfully talented friends who created an art collab which resulted in huge technicolour banners of dioramas of all of our underwater-themed crafts. Little frog took part, and he got very big and colourful!
These banners go to festivals and get seen by thousands of people, so lil froggy is now kinda famous!
These are the sorts of craft things I love most… humble, fiddly beginnings that morph into something mixed-media and multifaceted. I double extra love it when people re-craft my crafts into things I wouldn’t normally do, like this.
Baptism in fog
Go outside. Hang your body-steam ornaments in licked-steel air. Free your heat to mushroom loam as you drop your clothes.
Step onto velvet moss, black juice of ancient peat welling between your toes. Follow snail glitter paths and filmy cobblestones into dank smoked cold.
Your vastness is filling. Silence gives way to a staccato of crows. Clouds cataract, steal your hands. Kissed in soft cold you are Moses, parting the sea, Cleopatra, plunging in milk.
Billowing towers flow up and crash over. The sky parts to a diffuse, pearly spotlight as you turn with ballerina-grace in a silk-chill tornado. Every leaf turns to look. Den-curled creatures and writhing earthworms burrow up to see you disappear from view.
A transitory flash of amber bathes every silent stone. You're the air after a snap of the fingers, the imprint of words in the wind.
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
A trillion dead souls
“Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.” – Javik (Mass Effect 3)
The sky is full of moving light. Not stars, but flares blooming in the sky, each incandescent burst of crimson a searing cry for help.
Lives and universes eclipsed in violence. We used to reach, hopeful, to the stars. Now weapon fire arcs between worlds, leaving trails of incandescent tears.
The hull of the station grins open. Meteoroid scars, as expected, when faced with stoic determination. But gashes bubbled with molten metal are the will for change twisted into something monstrous.
Inside, there is no gravity, but we all feel the crushing weight nonetheless.
In zero-g, blood doesn't fall, it clings.
I switch on the satellite comms looking for connection, any transmission not choked with fury and tactical snarls. Orders spat through teeth grilled in hate. I contemplate ripping the comms unit from the bulkhead and hurling it into the unjudging dark. Replacing the poisoned words with silence, with emptiness that might make space for something different.
On the viewscreen, a planet looms. It should be a jewel – swirls of blue and green, a cradle of life. Instead it’s ribboned with smoke and amber glow, the cold fire of calculated ruin. War, that ancient infection of humanity, metastasizing across the galaxy.
My air recyclers pressurize and release, a mockery of the steadfastness of breath. We were astronauts, explorers... but today, we are nothing more than soldiers tethered to a metal tomb. We drift, waiting for the next command, the next atrocity – caught between the dispassionate void and the relentless hunger of war.
On the observation deck, a young recruit clutches their stomach. Their first journey among the stars, and their baptism is one of vomit and despair. This was not in the brochure. This endless dark was supposed to be filled with wonder.
I steel my face, open the hatch, and cast aside my hope. Maybe someday, someone might find it again in a forgotten crater. Maybe they'll have reason to believe in real heroes with good hearts. In the inherent justice of the universe.
Photo by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash
Visitor
The first time I saw an orca breach
I wasn't stopped by power or photo opportunity
but the silence after, as the sea’s breath slowed
like it wasn't hiding creatures the size of buses
in its depths. And me, perched on driftwood,
my small bones feeling the miles from home.
The mountains scraping the sky, turning purple
in twilight, do not know my name. I am a visitor
butchering their names upon my tongue. Still,
a longing rises within - a desire to belong,
without ownership, like moss sits with gravestones.
The leaf litter is thick with whispers older than
my bones. I do not rake them into neatness, but
step in, full aware of my clumsiness, my chest
open to their green unravelling. Aching with wonder,
a willingness to be made unfamiliar, to let the
vastness seep in.
Photo by Thomas Lipke on Unsplash