Tag: writing

Doors & Dreams

Jan 20th, 2026

Disclaimer: This piece was first published in The Cenacle 129, Winter Edition by Scriptor Press New England in 2026. Please find the original publication of this piece here: https://www.scriptorpress.com/cenacle/129.html

This work is a product of my imagination, and based off a recurring dream I had as a child. All characters, events, and settings are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events or copyrighted works is purely coincidental.

* * * * * *

I am searching for Doors.

For gateways and pathways and any-ways between. I suppose you already know what I am referring to. I would not be surprised if you have found your own Doors or Inbetweens at some point. Likely when you were a child. Yes, that always seems to be the case. What was it that Picasso said? That every child is an Artist, but the problem is how to remain an Artist once we grow up?

This inexplicably applies to finding Doors, too. I am curious by the existence of these Doors. Are they always there? Do they move? Do people create them, or manifest them? If I and somebody else walked through the same Door, would we see the same thing? How about the Doorways that are not arches in the woods or caves beneath a sea?

What about the Doorways between periods in time? The thresholds between childhood and adulthood? How about the state of Waking? Where consciousness and unconsciousness meet?

Perhaps Dreaming is the most accessible Door.

* *

The walls of the cave stretched taller than any cavern Celaena had seen before. She took a tentative step forward, allowing the beauty of the cave to engulf her. Along the sloping walls were lines of amethyst. There were no gaps in the jagged ceiling, no crevices or cracks to allow for any kind of light to filter through. No. The crystals were glowing as if by their own magick. She had never seen such a thing. For crystals to emit their own luminescence, and so brightly, it seemed impossible.

Beyond, the throat of the cave was as dark as obsidian and Celaena hugged herself at the menacing breeze that beckoned her to follow it into the darkness. The cave looked as though it had once been underwater, and now only half submerged. The dark mirror in the centre as if a portal to another realm. Its pool of water was motionless—ageless.

“Where are we?” her brother asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered, touching the cool and damp stone. Pebbles shuffled beneath her feet.

“Have you ever seen such a beautiful place?”

Before she could answer her father, a groan so ancient it raised every hair on her body, rumbled throughout the cavern. Silence. They waited, quiet and assessing.

“What the hell was that?” her father asked. The pool of water shimmered and began to stir, and the groan returned louder this time, closer. Breaking from the surface of the inky black rose a beast, the tips of its bulbous head inches away from the eroding stalactites on the ceiling.

“Run!” their father roared, but the beast had already set its large eyes upon them.

* *

All was darkness and ice. And Celaena couldn’t remember how they had secured the wooden rowboat which now floated metres from the caves external entrance.

“We have to row faster,” she screamed. But her tiny arms could not help her father, who already had a bead of sweat coating his forehead. Her brother, even smaller than her and four years younger, could do nothing but grip the edges of the boat. The beast was one from her nightmares. Its flesh had been a damp purple that faded into sickly grey, with giant tentacles that had begun flanking after years of ancient slumber.

Whatever they had woken—and however they had woken it, was not happy. Celaena hadn’t noticed the frigidness of the Arctic sea breeze until the waves appeared to cease. The stillness around her was unnatural. Her stomach dropped a heartbeat before the beast appeared again, towering over their puny boat. It appeared even larger outside of the cave somehow. Droplets of the sea rained down upon them as the beast raised its tentacles above its head, poising to strike.

All was darkness and Celaena couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t find her way back to the surface. The creature had grabbed hold of Celaena’s brother and pulled him beneath the depths of the sea. Her brother. Oh gods—oh gods, where was he?

Celaena didn’t even think before she dove back under the water to find him. Didn’t inhale a deep breath. She was more likely to drown before finding him. And her father—where was her father? She remembered he had immediately jumped in to save him, despite his paralysing fear of the ocean. Had jumped in to retrieve her brother, had told her to make it to shore somewhere and—there, she found him. Bundled in the unforgiving tentacles of the Kraken. That’s what it was called, she remembered, a Kraken.

Forced to come up for air, Celaena sputtered as she threw up salt and sea. She had to get back down there. She didn’t have time for the panic to freeze her. Render her useless. So, she dove, with a deeper breath this time and was met with the impossible. The Kraken had her father in one arm, her brother in the other.

At least, it had. The space where her brother was held captive began to shiver and glow, and in his place appeared a large yellow fish with a piranha-like mouth. What had just happened? Without thinking, Celaena screamed and lunged for her father, and in doing so inhaled lungfuls of water.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe and her father was changing, too. He stopped thrashing, and his stare became blank. The eerie glow casted itself around him, and the arm around his waist gripped tighter as yellow scales replaced his flesh.

All was darkness. And when Celaena opened her eyes, and found she was in her own bed, she couldn’t breathe.

* * * * * *
(Untitled)

Apr 30th, 2025

the waning moon
discharges jasmine-rays over

cosmic amniotic dice

~~perhaps~~ we will find
her one day, gazing toward

an endless sea
endless stars

endless questions
for eternal unshaven answers

i think i see you now perhaps, ~~it is too late~~
Fearing Her Absence, Dreading Her Voice

Apr 23rd, 2025

I spit the last of my teeth into my palms
and pry them from crimson gums,
trembling hands cup them in d e s p e r a t i o n
offering payment to the muse.
my mind trudges as slowly as a frozen screen— but i
tap and tap and tap
and tap and tap
and tap and tap
and scream through clenched teeth.
i hear about meteorite showers and howling winds,
aurora australis and
fairy wrens in the garden,
dolphins in the bay and
my father brings me home shells
but i never see
or see
or see
my muse. She wounds me, flirts with me.
the paranoia of not writing quick enough
grows beneath my finger nails and nail-prints
embed themselves into my palms
I can feel something inside me changing
and I’m terrified it will disappear.
she dangles fleeting thoughts but I would
sooner swallow the sun than beg
for a star. This fire inside me burns like hell
and to hell with waiting, what if she never takes over?
what if she does?
Untitled & Unanswered

Dec 6th, 2024

I sit              here

in the space between words and the world and

i think—well, daydream really. I wander, about the wonders.

and my mind it              PoUnDs                       incessantly

you should listen to your bodies call for water

                    (more on this later: the Return to the Water)

but back to the dreams. The day ones. Perhaps the scariest of all.

To dream in daylight where one cannot hide from what it is they are dreaming. There is no cover of shadow. If my thoughts manifested like the light of a star then they would race past the night sky and illuminate it in its entirety. It would be daylight regardless. Gods, they fucking burn bright. The pounding. in the head. again.

I—

                    i cannot get it all out. the longer i stare the more distorted my perception becomes. I assume I can just reach out and grasp the thought but its like a cat who lays in front of me. You can look, but you cannot touch. Maybe it wants me to slow down, I ponder. I stare at the thoughts. I ask if any of them want to sit with me.

Some do.

Others giggle and flitter away. I wish to see them soon. I offer my farewells and know I will meet them again in the sea. In the sky. I’m not scared to let these ones go.

But the ones who sit in front of me. I don’t want to spook them. these are the dreams I fear.

The ones I will not do justice because I have to be ever so quick and ever so careful.

I feign indifference. They see right through me.

Pick a pace, pick up a pace, any pace and space and look at you going! You’re doing it, really.

It’s like riding a bike, keep pedalling and it will tumble out. sometimes the words win and you don’t. sometimes the thoughts disguise themselves and all of a sudden you are writing and reading and singing and confessing things you never thought you would and—little bastards.

Quit! With the surprises already. Really. I hate them.

They blink at me. Just blink. And then I remember I am here. I am sitting. At my laptop and

dammit, they’ve got me spiralling

down the rabbit hole again—and yes,

I would take the blue pill thank-you-very-much and no

i do not want to talk about it
Nostalgia curses me with Golden Days

Nov 13th, 2024

There is something about the afternoon hour which drowns
me in feeling–it is cadmium yellow and saccharine, it clings to my teeth
nectar-thick and
this shit will rot me to my core, i think
right.down.to.the.root.
nostalgia hits me like a blow–dandelion tuffs trail bubbles
like will-o-wisps–but i welcome the memory with
masochistic palms, split open and bleeding
it grieves me and
weeps out of me and i burn with the high of golden hour
my hair is strawberry blonde because i absorb
all of the light. it consumes my very being and gods do i relish
the tenderness of a sunburn
i offer myself to this inferno. spike my innocence to a stake. just
as long as i can feel the sun
let me re-create scenarios and I’ll live in them forever
this shit will rot me to my core, i think
nothing tastes as sweet as sentimentality.
A Room of One’s Own

Oct 16th, 2024

~Just my silly internal monologue whilst reading Virginia Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own” (1929). Here, have some thoughts, do with them what you will. I hate everything xx

I sit here and ponder alongside Virginia Woolf, and I wonder about the women of the Shakespearean century. I think of how discouraged those women must have been. What her life might’ve looked like, indeed. If she were creative. I think about the madness that would have manifested as a result of her confinement. I think about the room I reside in right now. My bed, which I sit upon. The golden light of the afternoon sun warms my rapid fingers as I type and type and backspace. I think about the privileges I have been given. The rights I have lost. I think about how unfair it seems, that now we are allowed to dream, we are still punished for it.

When once, the art of dreaming. The art of thinking, questioning and curiosity were celebrated– held in the highest esteem. How the highest order of education is a doctorate in philosophy. Philosophy. Glorified overthinkers. I think about how unfair it is, that the moment we could write, if even “semi-freely,” it was no longer regarded as brilliance or intelligence. I think of how we are now reprimanded for doing the work of scholars so long ago. I think of how angry they were, when they realized perhaps we could do it better. I think of how angry they still are. How it has burned through centuries. How we have burned because of it. And perhaps this fear, if a better substitute for anger in this instance, led them to commit such atrocities. They took our names (they took more than our names). They called us hysterical, emotional, incongruous.

Maybe it is our fault that we let them (why do we take false accountability all the time?). It is no wonder women are so good at writing romance and fiction. It is their disposition to be such things. Emotional and without logic or reason, it is surely an unfair advantage they have, and not at all a reflection of [their/men/you can’t group all men like that, Maddie] own inferiority. Masterful magick a looking glass can be. I consider who we laminate as some of the “greats.” I consider that we still continue to regard these men (who some, were mediocre at best) with these labels, and with such certainty. I think about how this will likely never change. And I myself, are angry. Very. fucking angry.

That my confessionals are regarded as nothing more than childish. But Rousseau is regarded with such awe. As though my ‘big thoughts’ can never possibly be as loud as any mans. As though I will forever be an inarticulate wench, incapable of thinking anything worth the slightest test of pause. Of consideration. As if, nothing I can ever say will inspire such a change in thinking. And I am angry, too. I am angry that I am now granted a room. And yet, I have no use for it. I am granted a room. And I am confined to it. I am now granted a room, but the language is dead.

How Woolf would shake with violence at my naivety. How she would tear apart my mediocrity and tell me I have disgraced her name. But I would deserve it. For I have taken for granted the room she has given me. But does she realize that without the pressing need for a room, there is no pressing need for my voice? One will always create a room should she need one. And currently, I do not. At least, not in a way that is as life-altering as others. Everybody needs a room. But not everybody knows how to occupy the space. Not everyone is aware of how to continue to fill the room, without glimpsing somebody else’s, and seeing that theirs is better. Perhaps more stylish. Modern.

My room is littered with scraps of frivolous anger. No real action. Perhaps they are right, and I am nothing but emotional, hysterical, incongruous. Perhaps I am nothing at all.
Chasing that Sunshine High

May 29th, 2024

There is something so familiar about the smell of pollen in summer. The gentle tickling of the wind on my skin. The way the golden afternoon hour makes time slow down. My heart longing for more. The grass and the trees and the vibrancy of the world stirs something inside me. Coaxes it gently. Softly sets it free. Unshackled. Unbound. I move through the world, and the world moves through me. My lungs are full of air. Fresh, aching breath. And I don’t know how to describe this feeling but

I Am Alive.
A Tortured Poet’s Manifesto

May 17th, 2024

~A short [unedited and unfinished] manifesto detailing my writing process, written one cold Winter Solstice afternoon with friends.

Why do they want me to write a manifesto?

do they not know I am incapable of producing anything with merit? I used to write creatively all the time- to escape, to express. perhaps for the same reasons I would draw (to some degree anyhow). I think I just wanted to be like my dad. and impress. but the truth is that I don’t have the language in my arsenal to articulate how I feel. What I mean to say is… I’m blank.

There is nothing inside me.

To be frank, I’m scared. of not being good enough. original. of not having the words. im terrified of getting it wrong. You know what motivates me to write? the deadline. but even that is untrue. I wait until the very last moment to self-sabotage. if its bad, then I know why. if I fail, I know it’s because 100% of my efforts were not there.

Sometimes I think I feel the world too deeply.

and at times like this where I wish I could feel anything at all, there is nothing. n u m b. I stare at the mirror and it is e m p t y. I can’t tickle my soul. I can’t get inside my psyche. Am I protecting myself? Why can’t I be vulnerable, and with the company of others? I look at their work and I am not jealous. I don’t NOT write because I’m worried I can’t write as good as them. That is just fact. And one which I am simply okay with. Their beauty inspires me. Their writing moves me. And I would much rather be affected by somebody else’s words than my own. Perhaps there is too much self-deprecation. I know I’m not awful… I must have some kind of talent? Perhaps. I used to think hand-writing was easier. Could help chaotically get the ideas out. Scribbling-scrawls-scritch-scratch-getting anything-and-everything out-on-the-page attack that stupid [insert word] white space. write and then re-write. Start a new page; a new document. Because it is too chaotic. Because I cannot think, cannot [insert word here, Maddie] focus. The page cannot contain my thoughts in its entirety. I cannot make sense of the polished and unpolished occupying the same space.

I watch the wooden panels on the wall, the Pinterest-cosy-Instagram experience unfolding around me. The House of Wind. But is it my reality? I am sad and numb and angry and grateful and I feel gross and inadequate and alive and pins pricking needles. Path of pins or path of needles? I need to explore that liminal space- I need to write that ‘play’ into existence. That fantastical, magical, marvelous space. Healing that inner child who wanted to escape, escape, and escape. I wish my mind was made of honey-suckle or razor thorns, but it is muddy water. Have a taste and choke back salt and bile or gurgled gargled sea-water ocean expelling from the nose.

Drowning is never peaceful.

I want to live my life like a Studio Ghibli movie. I want to write like how When Marnie Was There feels. Familiar. Nostalgic. Other. But instead it’s like Dork Diaries or Mortified. Simple. Boring. Clichéd. It’s not whimsical like I’ll Give You The Sun, or entrancing like ACOTAR. It’s probably like Twisted Love. Just actual trash. Idk. Again, the self-deprecation. I want to write about everything but I just can’t. There is a literal block. I’m just stuck and stuck and stuck and bound and claustrophobic.

There is much anguish in my soul.

I remember early in high school what I used to write. I would be so descriptive and metaphorical. Allegorical and symbolic. Like they aren’t the same thing anyway… and then one day I just stopped. All the words fell out of my head. I’m not sure if this blank, simplistic voice is mine. I don’t think I’ve found my voice yet. My style. I don’t think I’ll ever have one, Barthes says I don’t, so it must be true. One day I decided that I didn’t need all the superfluous words to express myself anymore, I just wanted to get to the point. But now I don’t know how to go back. I have never felt so at home with writing and so lost within myself, I thought I had done some major soul searching already. I’m not ready to do it again. I don’t want to dip my toes in or jump [head- fingers-tips] first. I want to stare at the wall and pretend I’ve done all these things. I want to look at old photos and be transported back— I

I want to be alive in everything. Why can’t I write fast enough? It hurts. I can’t describe how much it physically aches. I can’t type fast enough either. It’s like a slow-motion fever dream. A flashback. I am suspended outside my body. Third-person. Focalisation. I bite my cheek. My hand cramps from the grip of my pen. Yet still it is not quick enough. It never will be. So I stop before it starts.

My mind is the tortured soul of a terrible poet. Why is that clock all of a sudden so loud with its rhythmic tick tick tick. The crocodile in peter pan. The crocodile school report. No comment.

My toes are cold. I hate that.

How do I write? With the idea that every word is impossible and I must shred apart my soul to get anything down. My writing is not a kind process for me. Not sure it’s even intuitive. It’s not always like breathing. I write down words that I think are beautiful, so that I don’t forget them, and maybe one day somebody will keep my own, too.
Broken Butterfly Wings

Apr 11th, 2024

I smile with the grace of butterfly wings

a gentle flutter

and though the wind offers me a soft caress,

I cannot help but shiver in its cool embrace

baby hairs tickle my nose and forehead

but I do not move them away.

I watch the world spin through the clouds

and so I swing higher and higher

I am awake, yet also asleep.

And even though I normally enjoy the sun’s

sweet buttery kiss

I almost wish it would go away

so the gnawing sickness in my stomach

would feel at home amongst the

overcast sky and

the world would be slow and still

and I would be able to die.
Woods of Wildness and Wonder

Aug 9th, 2023

Image produced by yours truly. Location: Halls Gap, Victoria.

I found an Overland article some time ago called ‘The Wildness of Girlhood’ (2019) by Bonnie Mary Liston. This article was able to capture experiences I could only dream of describing. She writes;

“There is a period in many little girls’ lives, around the age of ten, where they go completely wild. Not in the sense of Girls Gone Wild, which depressingly clogs up the search results, but in the most natural sense of the word – feral and free.

Not every little girl experiences this at the same time. Not every little girl experiences this at all, and some little girls don’t get to be girls when they are little – womankind is not a monolith – but enough, I think, would recognise this phenomenon. I’m talking about the girls who become obsessed with horses, or wolves, or witches, and who knew themselves to be wild creatures like those. They vanish outdoors, hiding in trees, sticking their hands in the dirt, making potions from mud and sticks. They escape into complex worlds of their own imagining, shared between other little girls or solitary kingdoms.”
Liston B M (2019) The wildness of girlhood, Overland <https://overland.org.au/2019/07/the-wildness-of-girlhood/>

There is something raw about this idea of girlhood. A connectedness, a phenomenon as she calls it, which speaks to some kind of universal truth. Ideas surrounding gender, girlhood and sexuality are under constant construction, and will remain so indefinitely. But why do we skim over this period of girlhood?

“she stands on the threshold of red wellies
left outside the back door…”

Memoli M (2023) Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Reframing Girlhood and Sexuality within Contemporary Revisions of Little Red Riding Hood
Memoli (2023)

A snippet from Chapter Two’s (of my thesis) introductory poem. We wear our wellies to splash in puddles and play outside. We stomp through the water with our gumboots- berries and rocks and flowers stashed in coat pockets too big for our baby bird bodies. It is a particular kind of nostalgia- the transformative aspect of growing up, from young girl, to young woman. The colour of the wellies, red; a visceral and phallic kind of symbolism, alluding to ones first menstrual bleeding, marking the beginning of womanhood (or does it?). The wellies have been left outside the back door, never to be worn again. One day we stopped going outside to play. why?

I ponder how we can describe childhood innocence without triggering the terms’ previous assumptions and connotations. By this I mean, when we think of ‘innocence,’ particularly in the context of ‘children,’ we are likely to think of them alongside terms and phrases such as; naïve, ignorant, ‘sexual innocence.’ ingenuous, trusting, purity, unspoiled, curiosity, wonder, adventurous, a lack of ‘corruption’ or ‘experience.’ In some ways we think of this negatively, particularly growing older, where we are ‘too innocent’ or ‘too naïve for the real world.’ We must have this ingenuous nature beaten out of us before we are eaten alive. We will not survive in the real world. You do not get anywhere by being kind, and believing the best of people. You should not smile. Give us a smile, love.

But I think perhaps we overlook this liberating wildness; this savage, unapologetic and raw curiosity. The spark for living. I believe it is a strength we bury through metamorphosis. The cocoon of puberty and societal expectations. Perhaps some rediscover this power later in life, when we are too old to care or be bound by invisible strings and negative self-beliefs. The world often feels like the wrong-sized shoe in our young adult years but perhaps we were always meant to run barefoot?

“We age out of wildness and straight in puberty, where our anger is on ourselves, and our bodies, and our mothers, and I don’t know what else. We’re part of the world again, and sometimes we forget being wild altogether, and sometimes we remember it fondly like Cathy in Wuthering Heights, as something we cannot recapture: an innocence killed by the stressful minutiae of adulthood.”
Liston B M (2019) The wildness of girlhood, Overland <https://overland.org.au/2019/07/the-wildness-of-girlhood/>

Oh how I wish I could embrace my inner wild child once more. Instead I cling to the anger of being forced to let her go. Raging against the rules that broke down my spirit piece by piece. That forced me into wearing dresses and brushing my hair. That taught me I could not embrace my femininity as a power, a strength. Maybe I needed the new Barbie movie when I was younger- to guide my restless, aching heart. I longed for the freedom of the outdoors, the wind on my skin, flying and tumbling and scraping knees. Before broken bones taught us to be cautious. I want to embrace the world like I have never been hurt before. With a recklessness that could level mountains. A passion to rival the seas. A fiery self-belief that is louder than the roaring wind. Perhaps I crave a return to nature, but what is nature? What is our nature?

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free. Why am I so changed? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills.”
Bronte E (1847) Wuthering Heights, Transatlantic Press, 138

I wonder if we will ever be able to reclaim such things, so freely? To reclaim a kind of autonomy which contributes to all freedoms? Not just sexual ‘wildness’ and ‘freedom,’ but to acknowledge the power of one’s wayward fairy-tale. To be a wolf in the woods. To wander and wonder.

“Her mother told her
she could grow up to be
anything she wanted to be,
so she grew up to become
the strongest of the strong,
the strangest of the strange,
the wildest of the wild,
the wolf leading the wolves.”
Gill N (2018) Fierce Fairy Tales & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul, Trapeze, London, 29.

To all the wild girls out there, do not just stray from the path, obliterate it.