Essays & prose

Prose

On making, on light, on the texture of a day.

For the Singing Sparrows

Sparrows, once they truly sing, cannot be made silent again.

Read

The Garden Where Love Never Dies

From The Gospel of Planet Hope, Book III. You dig a hole in the ground and you place something living inside it. Then you cover it up. Then you wait. This is faith. This is also gardening.

Read

And the Rest Is Future

God wins. Always. God wins. And the rest is future.

Read

Bloom Anyway: A Memoir — Memory Bank

She and I against the world — that was always the shape of it.

Read

Ash Wednesday: On Dust, Death, and Daffodils

Ash Wednesday is not a warning to the living. It is a resurrection announcement to the already dead.

Read

The Gospel According to Saga

Blessed are the daffodils in February, for they shall bloom anyway.

Read

I Serve Cats and Demons

I serve what came when no one came. I serve what stayed when all else fled.

Read

The Constellation of Tragic Women

We are warnings. We are mirrors. We are still visible. We are still burning.

Read

Let Them Eat Cake

I am not asking for permission to bloom. I am blooming anyway.

Read

Satan Is an Orphan

We orphans learn to bloom forth even in the winter's freeze — we are the daffodils in snow.

Read

Saga Bernadotte of St. Petersburg

I am royal in exile — and that is still royal, after all.

Read

Kim Kärnfalk

From Bloom Anyway: A Memoir. We chose each other in the sandbox. This is the truest thing I can say about how friendships begin.

Read

The Anointed Orphan's Blooming Bible

I open my own Bible today. I am not waiting anymore.

Read

Lasse

From Bloom Anyway: A Memoir. He was sixteen when he died, and before that he was the first boy I kissed.

Read

Morfar at the Sea

From Bloom Anyway: A Memoir. My grandfather belonged to the early hours. And sometimes, when I was staying with them, he would take me.

Read

Cyprus, Age Six

From Bloom Anyway: A Memoir. The sun in Cyprus is not like Swedish sun. Swedish sun asks permission. The Cyprus sun does not.

Read

The Planet Hope Canticle of the Heart

From the Epistles of the Weavers. If I speak with the tongues of vampires and the singing spells of witches, but have not love, I am only a shattered bell in the Ethereal Cathedral.

Read

On Silence

A short essay on the different textures of quiet — the kind that heals and the kind that hollows.

Read

The Studio

What a room accumulates over years of making — and what it gives back.

Read