Frolicking Fables

So is the grief.

I am sure no one is waiting.

I am sure this does not require an explanation.

And yet here I am, explaining,

because some things need to be said out loud

at 2 a.m.,

even if only the algorithm hears it.

I was in the middle of starting this,

finding a new place to reside,

finding a new rhythm to reside in,

figuring out what I wanted to make of the future.

Then I stumbled on a magical garden

that looked like something from a fairy tale.

All color and chaos and living things.

Exactly what my partner and I always said we wanted

and thought we were so far from arriving to.

We were waiting to be approved.

I was making plans.

Waiting for a new leaf to turn.

Then out of the blue,

I went to be by someone,

someone I had moved to this state to be closer to,

and watched them leave this realm.

A person I had wanted to bring to this secret garden.

To give them the whimsy and joy

they had given me all this time.

I was approved while they were dying inside their body.

Slow, yet fast.

It was not the announcement it would have been before.

Now I move through a bigger life

with a quieter place in it.

The footage you're seeing isn't mine yet.

I haven't lived there.

It was taken during a showing.

Though I will be there soon,

moving into a house that sits between two lakes,

trying not to feel so dull about something

that should feel like a dream.

I am sad.

A huge loss has happened.

I would trade many future dreams

to give even one more week.

But the logistics are what they are,

so I move through them.

But one day I will bring you into the garden,

in full color,

in HD,

when I am actually living in it,

when I have the words.

I will show you everything.

For now,

this is what it looks like from the outside,

through grief-tinted lenses.

Which is also where I am.

Each day I hope will be a little brighter

as I remember how brightly they burned.

For now,

this is why I'll be away for a while.

Drifting in and out through the haze of it.

Non-committal.

Nonchalant.

Attempting to heal.

to one day start to show you this magic garden

and maybe even the story of how I got here.

For now I leave for you a perfume name,

for I cannot do much more than that.

My grandma and I were out wandering when we stumbled upon a rental with the most incredible Secret Garden. I honestly could not believe what I was seeing.

*Pole below, with more description below that too, if you like that sort of thing*

What would you give up to live here?

It is hidden inside a cute little neighborhood where you would never expect to find something like this, frankly, you would not expect this kind of extravagance anywhere around here. The area is mostly prefab homes with charming little trailer parks at the end of some roads, or well-established trailers mixed in between the streets. And yet, tucked away in all of that, is this.

The garden has a koi pond, wisteria that looks to be at least 10 to 20 years old, vegetable beds, fire pits, chicken coops, animal runs, and more. It is an absolute dream property. The house itself looks beautifully updated with a washer and dryer, a roof-mounted HVAC system that I hear works wonderfully with the northern desert monsoons and dust storms, and is on septic managed by the landlord. The only things missing are a garage and a dishwasher.

Not sure how many renters could truly take on a property like this, the landscaping alone is a commitment, but for the right person, it would be an absolute paradise.

by the woman who became the wood

_____________________________

I cannot see you but I know you are there…

the way a body knows winter

before the first branch breaks.

I cannot hear you, though you are speaking.

The words arrive transcribed,

passed through bark and lichen,

through the wet grammar of moss.

Much of it lost in translations

_____________________________

The bejeweled dew dropped wood

envelopes me.

Not gently.

The way a story takes a woman

and makes her

unrecognizable

to herself.

The branches tangled my tongue

until silence became

the only fluent thing.

Only enough energy left

to grace me with breath.

_____________________________

The fog distances me from you

as if you are standing

right here

The doorway man

saying my name

My name

My name

which I cannot catch…

it falls to the petrified forest floor

And echos in the caves below

with the other lost items.

The keys. The voice.

The version of me

you were expecting.

_____________________________

There is a room.

Inside the room, a bed.

Inside the bed, a woman

who was once

a city.

She lit herself for years…

all voltage and pavement,

the beautiful noise of her own wanting.

To light a flame without fuel

is tiring.

Unsustainable in this economy

On this earth

With these resources.

It is fruitless.

The matches dissolve before striking.

_____________________________

Who am I here?

Does it matter.

Who are you without

a corporeal form -

without the body

that walked through doors,

that answered,

that could answer.

The forest has no appointment.

The fog does not require

an explanation.

_____________________________

I think of the Cheshire smile…

how it stayed

long after everything else

had dissolved.

I think: perhaps I am only the smile now.

The floating tail.

The suggestion of a creature

that was once here,

that loved

in the only way she knew…

which was: completely.

Which was: until she couldn't.

_____________________________

There is no end to this fog.

This forest.

This crystal ball

in which I am both

the woman

and the weather.

Both the glass

and the thing

sealed inside it.

_____________________________

A city does not become a wood overnight.

It happens the way transformation always happens…

quietly,

without your permission,

Somehow,

while you were looking

directly at it.

_____________________________

I cannot see you but I know you are there.

I am still here too.

Somewhere in the pearl-lit canopy.

Somewhere in the layered mist.

Rooting.

Wanting to root for a future

I have no energy for any longer

Nothing left

A hole is dug

And I am buried

Blanketed under the soft soil

Rooting

But not sprouting

Unsure if I ever will again

Becoming the fungus

that cannot speak words

But connects communication through trees root systems

No longer of good use in the land above.

I stay below

Rooting.

_____________________________

The woman and the wood

are the same photograph now…

you cannot tell

where one grief ends

and the other begins.

*Listen to Bodies of Water by Cosmo Sheldrake while listening for enhanced experience*

The Metamorphic Neon Woman

She walks into the green.

Because

The town did not make room.

The green does. This is the difference between

a place and a fact.

The woods decide to use her.

For her outsides are bright

like a thing that warns you…

poisonous, they say,

meaning; do not touch what you cannot keep… for long.

That screams: till death do us part.

Something to be used

to ward off others from the forest.

Her outside appearance

does not match her

dark correspondent heart.

Nothing ever does. We know this.

We say it anyway.

The towns are dull the way a word goes dull in repetition,

repetition, repetition, streetlight, streetlight,

the people filling in like sediment.

Concrete. Metal.

Planks detached from their root system.

It is not the city's fault.

She has told herself this before…

She is the wrong frequency.

A fact the towns and the cities decided long ago

the way all verdicts are decided,

quietly, and without her.

But the trees accept her.

What is neon but a gas

that lights up only when something

passes through.

The forest passes through her.

With her compliance.

She stands there.

Glowing.

A communication not made with the outside world.

A fermentation ready to burst.

A brightness.

Only the intertwined can achieve

this being known

by something that does not require you

to be otherwise.

Its only requirement is

…to be.

Would not redirect creeks.

But they built some right next to them anyway.

They said they would create jobs.

They hired eleven.

They need a 12 megawatt power vacuum for cooling,

which could power 12,000 homes.

They don't talk about that.

They don't talk about how the frequency

disrupts human sleep.

They said these ones don't use much water.

They use evaporated systems.

They use diesel.

A whole lot of diesel.

Where do the exhausts go?

Is that regulated yet?

They don't talk about that.

That's not smoke on the water.

That's a chemical cloud.

For which you can't see in most light.

You can't see benzene, or xylene.

Or most TVOCs.

They know a lot of the

low levels long term exposure

cause health issues over time.

Causes highly elevated risks of leukemia, respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological issues.

They know most won't realize until it's too late.

They know most won't connect the dots by then.

They systemically invest.

They invest in what is not studied.

They invest in studies long forgotten.

They invest in the hospitals.

Teaching hospitals.

Invest in certain scholarships, for certain people.

They invest in insurance.

They invest in pharmacies.

Their friends with the pharmaceutical companies

who join the pharmacies and the pharmaceuticals

into one monopoly

for which we cannot escape from.

Unless we are the ten fat men.

The priiivi…

The leged.

What is that in the water?

What's that smell in the air?

A whiff and gone, if detected at all

undetectable like most toxins

they exhaust these days.

"Privilege"

a bad word now, they tell us.

Like any other word

that does not give them more.

Narrated into law online.

By billionaires.

Until we forgot we were the ones

who taught them how to speak.

The lake does not grieve for us.

It simply takes the sky in.

The trees stood in it.

Processing. Knowing. Still.

A conversation held entirely underground,

root to root,

the only language left

that does not lie.

The gavel bangs.

This woman is being hysterical…

Take her away.

Silence. The majority. Silence.

The trees were always going to outlast the argument.

The hope was always going to be

quieter than we wanted.

That was the whole thing.

That was always the whole thing.

Silence. The majority. Silence.

P.S. Short on time? This works as the "shorter version", Ready to actually absorb more? The post after this is for you with the, extended version in an unrushed form.

*This image was not edited with AI.*

It definitely wasn't as quick as AI but I have been layering images I have taken in nature with some of myself to create different abstractions and coming up with something I think are a lot more personally intentional.

by the woman who wanted become the woods

_____________________________

Sometimes I want to runaway

to somewhere green and wordless,

where the branches don't know my gender

or the way my body fails its contracts.

The woods don't keep score.

They don't hand you a list

of everything you didn't finish.

I have been so tired of being

the wrong shape for the room

too slow, too much, too far behind, too far ahead.

Out there where

you cannot speak the wrong words

because no words are spoken.

Where everything is

meant to be misshapen

Let the moss have me.

Let the dirt forget my name.

Out there the falling leaves

don't call it failure,

they just call it autumn,

Something beautifully decayed

Though, they don't reslly call it anything

They don't ask

They embrace.

*Image not edited by AI*

SCENTED VERSES

Fox in the Flowerbed by @ImaginaryAuthors

A clear, bright jasmine scent made for spring and summer, comforting, soft, quietly uplifting.

If you love jasmine and gentle layers of green, honeyed mountain range air, and light spice, this is something easy to reach for, something familiar to live in or return to when you need to be uplifted.

A beautiful, laid-back choice for Ostara, Easter, and the turning seasons,

or any quiet moment that needs brightening

Fragrance Notes:

♡ Jasmine

♡ Tulips

♡ Frankincense

♡ Wildflower Honey

♡ Pink Peppercorns

♡ Silver Thistle

♡ Alpine Air

If you enjoy this, you may also enjoy:

Jasmine Tea by One Day, Perfumer and founder Michael Wong.

#SpringPerfume #FoxInTheFlowerbedImaginaryAuthors #PerfumeTok #PoetryLovers #JasminePerfume #Fairycore

They do not know

the tulips,

the crocus,

or the daffodils…

only the blur of them

on a spring walk

as they bloom.

They know jasmine.

And wildflower honey…

soft,

familiar,

warm like hands

that pet them

after holding a hot mug

from someone they love.

Frankincense,

they remember from darker months,

when mother lights the sabbath candles.

Pink peppercorn,

sharp and bright,

Like when I grind it fresh…

the way my father taught me to.

Silver thistle,

Is something quieter…

like the silver flowers

that came when he passed.

They do not remember fully,

only in fragments,

in feeling.

Like alpine air

a distant memory

of mountain wind,

of the northern desert,

of places they once ran.

But what calls them

is the jasmine.

It brings them back to me.

Everything else lingers behind it

soft,

strange,

unspoken

and they trust it.

They settle

into warmth,

into quiet,

into an easy Easter Sunday.

They love to lounge,

to play,

to be dressed up and adored.

And I love any reason

to celebrate the turning,

the return

Ostara,

and the ones I love

born on this day.

This scent is sweetness

honey warmed in the sun

and something brighter,

like wind through green spring air.

But all of it

rests behind the jasmine.

Which they know.

Because it smells like me.

Seiko Ayase is everything and since Netflix is streaming Dandadan everyone should know.

SCENTED VERSES

NOTES:

This beautiful perfume was part of the Rhubarb Thief discovery set, created for @Mars,

brought back from @HereticParfum archives

to pair perfectly with a collection of animalic spring scents.

Whiffs of spring greens, softened with creamy notes, feral florals, subtle citruses, spicy sentimental notes that lightly incense the herbaceous clouds brushed in from a 90s flashback, layered with both density and airiness of the in-between.

Each note swirls into a carefully crafted ritual.

A dark, spicy indolic jasmine melts into a soft, nostalgic 90s skin scent, a sort of spiced tonka cloud.

At first whiff, I assumed vanilla, perhaps because of Heretic’s Dirty Vanilla, though it was different, and I should have known it was tonka bean,

vanilla’s deeper, more complex twin.

I still recommend Heretic's Dirty Vanilla for vanilla skeptics, however.

Here, tonka quietly grounds the entire experience,

wrapped in light earthy woods, soft citrus florals, creamy clouds lightly touched with incense,

and that ever-incandescent, ritualistic jasmine.

Tonka acts as the backbone,

carrying the top and heart notes from beginning to end, gently rounding each one,

like a single symphonic piece.

If you love jasmine in all its forms,

and are open to something unexpected…

a little vintage experience,

this is worth exploring.

If you enjoy this, you may also enjoy:

• The Decay of the Angel - Timothy Han Edition Perfumes, Founder & Perfumer: Timothy Han

• Dirty Vanilla - Heretic Parfum, Founder & Perfumer: Douglas Little

• Or du Serail - Naomi Goodsir, Perfumer: Bertrand Duchaufou

• Jasmin et Cigarette - Etat Libre d'Orange, Parfumeur: Antoine Maisondieu

You can sample most of these through discovery sets on the house brands’ sites,

or through niche perfume retailers and decanters such as @Luckyscent or @MinistryOfScent,

where you can buy multiple brands’ samples at once.

Heretic’s layering rituals recommend pairing Jasmine Smoke with Beekeeper or Dirty Hinoki.

Though Dirty Hinoki is one of my all-time favorites,I do love the smell of honey.

Today, I chose Beekeeper,

and it was beautiful.

Both wore evenly throughout the day,

lasting in quiet harmony.

Though these verses were mostly written about the ending notes, the skin scent left behind at the close of the day,

the opening smells like visiting your goth aunt’s house in the ’90s,

as she makes tea for you on a rainy day.

I hope you enjoyed this scent story.

Born of a fever dream,

ritualizing spring before the flare could take me,

released into the ether,

in the hope it finds

someone who feels the same

in the many languages of scent.

I experienced it first,

before knowing what it was made of.

The video, the editing,

an honest encounter.

Posted for long-form watchers,

those who want to pause,

to breathe,

Moving from the city into the woods felt, at first, like a silencing. As if my expression had to shrink to fit the landscape. As if I had to become someone else to belong here.

There is truth in that, but no more than the quiet truth that we also change ourselves to belong to a city.

I wore the same dress two different ways. Once, a Catherine O'Hara kind of city version of myself, styled for a wedding up north. The other, I softened into something more rooted, a woodsy witch stitched together from quieter places. Both whimsical. Both me. Both entirely different.

In that contrast, I realized I had found myself again, and this time, I was content to lean into the latter.

Here I was, wrapped in the embroidery of my mom’s old scarf, dyed with natural colors and made with care, crafted to last. I was raised to be thrifty, and that is a gift I will always carry with me.

I found myself in the details. In thoughtful pairings. In thrifted pieces that once belonged to upper class retirees, to working union families, to artisans who cared for their denim and garments as if they were meant to last a lifetime, because good heirloom clothing can last multiple lifetimes when it is cared for properly.

Clothes made to be kept, not consumed. Recycled and reused. Loved and cherished. Held onto.

Things that ask for care, and in return, offer it.

Somewhere along the way, society stopped wanting to read the instructions. And everything else unraveled from there.

Here I write this in fuzzy wool socks my friend knit me, my favorite worn vintage jeans, that fit me like a glove, and my moms old blouse, falling back in love with my sustainable expression, and with myself, only after feeling it stripped away and returned through a different lens, in a different land.

Sometimes that is what it takes. A little adjustment. A little time. A quiet unraveling before something new can take shape.

Now I feel as I should in my clothing again. They do not wear me, and I do not wear them. We wear each other, thoughtfully, intentionally. And whether anyone else understands it no longer matters again, because when something is true, it resonates anyway.

You cannot force freedom. Freedom is something you grow into.

With short spurts, I wax and I wane, and still, I find myself once more.

Somewhere between Miss Honey and the Windchime garden from Harriet the Spy, filmed at the Cathedral of Junk in Austin Texas, a whimsical recycled 90s-style interactive, electric, fairy garden. It reminded me of the magic my Grandma Beanie created in her own realms and in my world growing up.

Before Instagram showed the world step-by-step instructions on how to be whimsical resistant and how to be sustainable and recycle their art, without investing into the system, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, even my Aunt Acid, and I were matriarchally (together and separately, sometimes, across the country, only through wired phone lines, pre-internet) figuring it out through trial and error and limited funds, both together and apart.

What people now call, or have rebranded as sustainability, I was raised doing. We turned art out of thrifted items, discarded objects, and dumpsters, pieces many people called junk at the time. Now those same ideas, those pieces of art created from what others once called junk, are often appropriated and remanufactured into cheap, bastardized versions sold through fast-fashion and fast-deco marketplaces.

What all the women on my mom’s side created for me was magical, so much so that it was often hard to explain to the rest of the world.

I once had an ex make fun of me for saying those old faded fairy postcards reminded me of my grandmother. I stayed silent as they mocked the idea that magic and whimsy could have been part of my childhood. But that was only because my Grandma Beanie completely embodied whimsy for me, one of the purest forms of anti-capitalist magic, created mostly from found and recycled objects. Not a effortless life to live might I add but more fulfilling than one spent on the internet.

If she wasn't homeschooling me I would come home from school and find little Alice's Adventures in Wonderland landscapes laid out for me through the property. She would soak the labels off Orbitz lava jelly drink bottles and tie tags on them that said “Drink Me,” make plates of cookies of varying sizes that said “Eat Me,” and lead me through the house on whimsical treasure hunts.

It was her way of distracting me from the less pleasant things happening around me. She brought whimsy into stark places, resisting the hopelessness, a most radical form of rebellion.

While my mom was more like a warm quilted blanket, the Miss Honey type from Matilda, my Grandma Beanie was more of a mix of Mrs. W and Ole Golly, teaching whimsy in the spirit of Harriet the Spy.

My ideal future, ever since I was little, has been creating a peaceful refuge just as magical in my own way, inspired by both of them. I still dream of landing somewhere between Miss Honey’s quiet getaway and this kind of whimsical, interactive “junk cathedral” created by Mrs. W. Though realistically, in this economy, fortune may lean a little closer to the latter, maybe I will be able to find my own path in-between the two.

I’ll post a clip of the fantastic scene from Harriet the Spy below.