A collection of stories (mostly free stories on Substack)

Keening Over the Bones

A story of a doll making ritual, of becoming. Doll making today as part of a long and ancient linage.

Excerpt:

I was gifted what seems it might be a guilimot beak, from a bird long dead. I added it to the bundle as I walked the beach. A gentle keening over these doll bones. A bringing to life song, a holy holding.

She is still within her bundle, slowly forming. Her should, or becoming cloth, a vintage Irish tweed with Hebridean sea hues.

A Hebridean Grief Ritual

Excerpt:

My loss, fragile like the eggshell. I fill it up with meaningful flowers, stories, and memories. A little gesture and expression to a life well lived, a person mourned, who is somehow still beside me. I can’t tell you why this little gesture made me feel better, somehow engaging in a type of creativity made meaning, brought me closer to what I was missing. It doesn’t need to make sense, I don’t have to explain it. It just works.

A Keening With the Land

Where do you take your sorrow?

Excerpt:

I have come to the hill on wet and rainy days, I have sobbed and added to the rainfall. I have buried things in her soil. I have brought offerings of whisky but most of all my main offering is myself. I have sang laments low and out of tune only to be joined by crow and skylark.