#avernotober

i’ve heard about the ritual. for when you just can’t take it anymore. 

the last resort, the ultimate escape, the swan song for the most miserable souls. 

when the moon is her biggest and brightest, dyeing the world silver, and the stars align to be a guide, they say a new forest path reveals itself. one that closes behind you once you take your first step. 

the air carries an uncanny weight, yet you breathe it in. it’s sweet, like syrup. 

the change is slow at first. your skin grows cold. dries out. you pinch to fight off numbness, and find it’s also gotten… rougher. like bark. 

your hair mats together, knotting into itself as if woven by the midnight winds. moss overtakes your legs, and you grow slower, and slower. it pins you to the earth. 

and that’s when warmth returns, first inside you, and then out. you breathe in with lungs full of roots and dead leaves. 

toš jsem se poprvé tento rok pustila do inktoberu, tak jsem zvědavá, jak dlouho mi to vydrží, hehe...

i want to tell a story of solstices and sunshine beating down on thatched roofs. a mother and daughter hidden by trees and guarded by flowers.

aster’s cottage lies empty now, breathing softly under mounds of soil, plaster crumbled to powder and thatch to ashes. her roses grow wild, her well is dry, and her cabbage patch lies fallow. a willow tree grows over it all, mother and daughter still hidden by trees, even now.

made of skull and wing, animated through reckless will. things once lost forced to a different purpose, forged of violent death--no wonder you escaped when your creator made you. after centuries buried under leaf mold and soil, who could blame you?

i think i can hear you click-click-clacking on the pavement outside my door sometimes, can hear the futile hum of wings remembering what it felt like to fly.

stems twine around my fingers, all shades of light green. i will them to grow. so delicate these flowers,one wrong move and i would rip their spines in two. iris tilts her head up to meet me and i hand her a basket made of living flowers.

i want my hands to be for healing, for living. i want to use my hands to keep her safe. my hands which have been sanctified in the warm blood of deer, which have stretched hides to make her clothes, which have blessed poultices to help her, to help them all, heal.

in the beginning, this is not enough. armfuls of flowers cannot shield her from vengeful men, the blood of deer cannot bring her back to life, and poultices cannot extinguish flames.

to live i must tear, not mend. i must create shadowed spaces where men are too afraid to venture. being alive is not enough.

this time, stems embroider their way through my veins, my life for the life of the forest. my life’s blood for the vitality, the safety, of them all.