Joyce

This was a place of comfort once.

Enveloped in memories and ghosts, my days feel endless, short, repetitive. Time is slippery until Tuesdays—most Tuesdays, anyways. I've been called to the cabin to grieve a mother, a body, an ideal love. I've escaped for clarity, and the deep breath I can't take anywhere else.

As I settle in, the unexpected finds me. It sneaks in through shattering glass and rustling leaves. It's seen and unseen, felt and heard and known.

Though the world is dark from where I am now, healing seems possible. If only I can get out onto the lake. If only I'm able to understand the house witch as much as she did. If only I learn the ways of the woods like Dad. If only.

I will speak with the birds. I will become the sky. I will come undone and remake myself. But who will I be on the other side?

Quiet and evocative, Joyce is embodied dark crip magical realism examining life in a haunted body.