Welcome to the Mercurial Muser

An Ode to Sunbathing in the Cemetery (in honour of spooky season)

I came to sunbathe with the corpses. To take communion amid the warmth and rot. To surrender to the sanctity and silence of a sun-soaked séance, suspending myself in the liminal space between here and gone. The dead don’t mind. They were once warm too, with eyes that flickered and drank the sun. I lay my blanket between two headstones—Beloved Mother, and Gone But Not Forgotten—and unbutton my dress like a sacrament. The sun extends its rays and finds me. Finds the soft parts. Finds the grief curled up behind my clavicle like a quivering, soft-bellied prey, and kisses it until it stops twitching.

I offer my body to the Earth. Grass presses against my back like a thousand quiet hands. Bees hum elegies. A crow heckles me from a weepy oak. I raise my sunglasses and wink. I am not here to mourn; I am here to remember. To bronze my skin with the residue of love and loss. To feel something, anything at all---down to the marrow. To remind myself I hold decay in my palm the same way others hold a bouquet of flowers.

Someone—probably in pew or pulpit—would say this is wrong. But I am here, and the sky is here, and my body—this exhausted cathedral—is still breathing. The tombstones don’t flinch. They’ve seen everything. They understand that worship isn’t always on your knees. Sometimes it’s just about remembering your aliveness in the presence of those who are no longer.

In the distance, I spot a freshly dug grave alongside a row of headstones bearing the same family name. I gaze at the forgotten, crumbling markers standing wearily amid others carved from the finest marble. I wonder what their legacies were. Time erases everything. People always forget. I turn my attention towards the solemn monuments still tended to by the shaking hands of grief and love. I think of the bodies slowly dissolving into the Earth beneath the votive offerings and vases of flowers. People never let go. I breathe in the scent of soil, gardenias, and rusted brass—growing slightly resentful that we waste space even in death, and that, for some reason, our loved ones make shrines for us instead of letting us find our way to the next incarnation unburdened.

As for me? All I possess is a beating heart—tender, bloodied, and raw—to leave as a grave offering. Maybe that’s enough, I think. I eat a peach, juices dribbling down my chin. I sweat. I cry just a little. A breeze lifts my hair like fingers that once held me. And for a moment—just a moment—this macabre picnic of skin and sorrow feels like a resurrection.

Life is a beautiful, rotten thing. And I am proof of that. I’m still here. The sun still looks for me. Just ask the departed.

Well, you could… but they probably wouldn’t answer.

The Girl in the Glass Coffin

Updated: 13 hours ago

How's this fair? You get to observe and I get to bleed out in front of you? When I was younger, I had this recurring dream: I don't remember every detail, except that I had died, or at least my skin sack did, and my soul, this bright, purple light, was trapped with my silken nude body in this pristine and ethereal glass coffin that strangers who mourned me walked past. They looked like actors in a play, blubbering ostentatious tears, as if they ever fucking knew me at all. I wanted to say I still felt very much alive, that I hadn't reached my depths, but my mouth couldn't move because it was jammed with whatever they put inside the mouths of the dead so the curvature of their lips looked more natural—cotton, I think. Eventually, I tried to scream, but of course the words wouldn't come out because my body had stopped working and it was stuffed full of this gauzy, cotton shit. I looked very beautiful, like I always do when I know people are expecting me. But my voice was gone, and I felt so hollow, like I was collapsing inward. Like every spark was being extracted from my circuitry, which was undoubtedly already operating on rusted gears, and at any moment, I would simply cease to exist. I always woke up right before the nothingness set in.

I still have no idea what the dream means. I don't believe in dream analysis anymore—it has no utility since obviously our dreams are never fulfilled in the literal sense. But upon waking, I couldn’t help but feel unsettled that my soul was screaming for help and these giddy grief thieves just walked on past, crying like they cared, only because the least interesting part of me was gone. Had they listened and looked closely enough, they may have surmised that there was still life, still sparks somewhere within. All I know is, when I was screaming and begging to be seen, I eventually gave up on anybody really ever knowing me, and tucked that dazzling purple light in like a child—warm and safe and freed from monsters—until suddenly I no longer craved being known, because being known, for all its beauty, is also deeply painful.

And sometime later it dawned on me that almost everything we do on this plane—love, trust, hate, fear—is just an act in service of our own survival. That's why people are dispensable to each other. That's why you can pretend someone doesn't exist as long as it serves your story better. That's why we consume, fetishize, and study others like scholars without actually entering their material life, choosing quiet peeks instead of sitting alongside them in their moments of suffering and joy. It hurts to feel too much, and sometimes I think I feel for the masses who can't, or won't. And so it'll always be that way.

I don't know why I tell you this story. I guess I don't really want to be observed like a fish floundering near the surface of the water anymore. I have made a lifetime out of being vulnerable and tender for the sake of others, but it's time to put this bright purple light to better use.

I want to be taken seriously for once in my goddamn life. When I was a young girl, I wanted to be a humanitarian. To soften the edges of the world somehow. And in a way, becoming a mom has given me that. It's the best role I've ever taken on, no doubt. But I need to rethink the other facets of self that I allow for public consumption.

Time to either live my best artist life under a bridge somewhere, tagging provocative shit about collapsing the government, or get serious and stop giving in to useless dreams. Who knows, maybe the artist and the activist can co-exist somewhere. Either way, time to shatter the glass coffin and put this place to rest sometime soon. Best get your glimpses while you can.

Turns out I never died. I’m alive and you missed it.

Living in the Age of Spectacle: The Opiate of the Masses

Updated: Sep 30

It’s been a rough couple weeks out in social media land, hasn’t it? Lessons learned thus far: hundreds of American school kids get reduced to disposable statistics of gun violence every year, but one white Christian nationalist who actively endorsed the utility of such violence? Martyred. Meanwhile, the Western world melts down when a white, unfunny male comedian suddenly disappears from TV as a result of censorship, yet scrolls past two years of bombed-out bodies in the Middle East—until they're fed a product, or some wellness-capitalist platitude that makes them feel something, anything at all. And then, to top it off, pregnant women popping Tylenol is a no-no because apparently it can pass on a little 'tism. Something tells me Dr. Oz will be coming up with the antidote, but I can't be 100% sure. Capitalists gotta capitalize, after all.

Which brings me to my next big idea: funeral merch is the future. Forget legacy. At my funeral, I want pyrotechnics and product-lines. When I die, you can bet your ass my kids will be hawking miniature, gold-plated statues of my (pre-baby) naked body for $139.99 a pop—collectible, tragic, and perfectly absurd. Mourn me in style, baby. For an extra $49.99, you can snag tiny limited-edition coffins bedazzled with hand-glued replicas of my teeth (always admired, obviously). I want sexy little shirts with my sexy little face on them, preferably with the perfect head-tilt. Let’s go all out. Pour it back into my estate. Let’s make my brand bigger than life… even in death.

On a serious note, if you couldn't already tell, my coping mechanism for all this insanity is satire. Without it, I start to spiral, wondering what the point of authenticity is when the very society we crave to belong to is a spectacle designed to keep us distracted while real suffering goes unnoticed. I don’t mean myself—I’ll be fine, if a little alienated—but when I think of the people who don’t have the luxury of escaping pain through modern-day capitalist spiritual bypasses, mental acrobatics, or sheer dissociation, it hits differently.

I really feel like I'm not on the right planet sometimes, but alas...

Growing In

On boring days

I flash the neighbours.

The twenty-year-old

across the street

doesn’t seem to mind.

He flirts

while I walk the dog—

Crocs on his feet,

that dopey pube stache grin.

Tapered sweats,

too small

to hide

the eggplant.

Maybe

that’s the point.

I’d never

fucking touch him.

Not in real life.

I always liked

the ones

who didn’t

follow trends.

But I like

the attention.

Even if it

feels hollow

by the time

I hit the driveway.

And maybe

he does too.

I used to be

something.

I used to

love art.

Now I get angry

dusting

the same landscapes—

no closer than

my living room.

My husband likes

to remind me

how I used to fuck

like a bad girl

underneath the sun.

His friends used to have

group chats

dedicated

to the bathing suits

I wore

in the summer heat.

Like I was

supposed to

never degrade—

only bloom

for the love

of a man.

Now I have

a favourite spatula

and trade

in Rae Dunn

collectibles.

I used to

believe in

uprisings

and pixelated dreams

pasted to

a poster board.

Like I was

supposed to

grow up.

But instead,

I’m growing in.

A muzzle to wear

over that pretty

filthy mouth,

a tiny, beaded noose

from a craft kit

kept high

in the cupboard,

a fading light

kept alert by

a persistent

electronic tether—

all it’s good for is to check the weather.

(all it’s good for is to check the weather)

But the sky

ain’t blue today,

as I lie

in a top-tier bed,

scrolling the weather app

that freezes every time

I try to track the storm,

sobbing into a silk pillowcase

in the two-million-dollar house

I’ll probably

waste away in.

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