Joyce
Their Haunted Bodies #1
This was a place of comfort once.
Enveloped in memories and ghosts, my days feel endless, short, repetitive. Time is slippery until Tuesdays—most Tuesdays, anyways. I’ve been called to the cabin to grieve a mother, a body, an ideal love. I’ve escaped for clarity and the deep breath I can’t take anywhere else.
As I settle in, the unexpected finds me. It sneaks in through shattering glass and rustling leaves. It’s seen and unseen, felt and heard and known.
Though the world is dark from where I am now, healing seems possible. If only I can get out onto the lake. If only I’m able to understand the house witch as much as she did. If only I learn the ways of the woods like Dad. If only.
I will speak with the birds. I will become the sky. I will come undone and remake myself. But who will I be on the other side?
Quiet and evocative, Joyce is embodied dark crip magical realism examining life in a haunted body.
Finish it, love it, and share it with your book club! Then grab the Book Club Guide to have a memorable club meeting!
You want to know more about my choices? Visit my recommendation article on BookDNA.
From left to right: 1. Rory rolling on the title and a small bee in pulled honey / 2. A glass bee made by Sarah Walker @ Shadowfire Glass (sarahandjoe8@gmail.com) / 3. The pulled honey living its best life out in the woods on a rainy day. Yes, the birds loved it.
mood board
Credit top to bottom, left to right: 1. @the_reprogrammed.parent / 2. Virginia Woolf / 3. Nick Linden via Unsplash / 4. Maksim Romashkin via Pexels / 5. @oneawkwardmom / 6. @womenwhorunwiththemoon
launch event <3
Top to bottom, left to right: 1. Closeup of fused glass lantern with me reading in the background / 2. Me reading Joyce in public for the first time with the embroidery from the cover behind me / 3. Another side of the fused glass lantern with me reading in the background / 4. Another side of the fused glass lantern close up / 5. Me after a long night with the hubs (Wesley Mitchell) kissing my head / 5. The final side of the fused glass lantern with me reading in the background / 6. The hubs (Wesley Mitchell), a friend, and me laughing / 7. Erin Hall, a friend, me, Rose Wilde Hall, Angelique O'Rourke | *named people are authors I've published in anthologies—check em out
Excerpt:
worn.
Teen Bop posters and glow-in-the-dark stickers haunt the room like ghosts of my past. I told my mother she could change it so many years ago, but the glossy paper still clings by the grace of a few putty wads. Photos of friends I can’t remember and a lipstick print on the mirror serve as a reminder that I was once a healthy, vibrant young woman, that I’ve had breathless dawns on the beach and laughter-filled nights, waiting in line to dance.
This was a place of comfort once. It’s not the same. Now that I’ve aged and the roof is missing shingles, now that the cedar pier has new divots from storms I wasn’t here for and fresh growth has made the forest more wild, now that the nearest town noise has risen and occasionally shatters the expected stillness, now that the house is empty, now that she’s dead.
The twin bed is uncomfortable. Not just because it’s low to the ground or firm from the cold. Memories and nightmares are woven into the fabric—monsters clawing at my feet, a kiss with Henry, my hands over my ears, doing homework, filling out magazine quizzes, screaming myself awake, the first time I listened to a record.
My rarely-used keyboard is shoved in the corner, the bench seat still hard. Sitting on it now makes my spine hurt, reminding me why I stopped attending practice in the first place. I’ve forgotten what a G minor is and how much that matters to the act of playing a tune.
I hunt-and-peck at the keys, looking for the right notes. After a few moments, my hands find the proper position, and my knees curl into my chest, like they always did.
It’s lucky you don’t want to use a Baby Grand, my mother would often say, pointing out my imperfect posture and inability to work pedals with no feet on the ground. I had no desire to learn the piano at all. Never did. She pretended not to understand that.
But now, I’m playing our melody. Or trying. It’s not good. Sour notes bash into my brain. Nerve endings at the tips of my fingers burn.
When I taste snot, I stand. There’s no proper end, no bowing, no clapping from a humoring teacher, just the melody becoming an echo of itself in my ears.
As it fades, the house picks up where it left off. Never fully silent, it moans and creaks from the witch who’s supposedly been burrowed in the walls since long before my mother summered here in the 70s. She’s said to always sound old, moody, needy. Though my mother, Dad, Gramms, and Gramps all claim to believe in her, no one ever heard the same thing at the same time. She is either real and speaks to us only when we need her or she is just a story.
I am a lot like the house witch now. Old body, mood swings, needing things I’ll never be able to get again. It could be why I have finally found my way into my childhood bedroom. A few days here, and I’ve slept in the guest bedroom—if only to avoid.
