Walk the Line

“It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life, from its very beginning, is a mystery to you.” ― Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother American Horror: Murder House is the story of a couple living with the ghost of their only child. In The Killing parents mourn their murdered daughter. Happy…

Furies

When I was seventeen I played a Fury in a play loosely based on The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus at a summer theatre camp in Cheltenham, England. It was my first introduction to Greek tragedy. The play tells the story of Orestes who kills his mother, Clytemnestra, and avenges his father, Agamemnon, the king of…

Vampires & Stars

  “We’re all stories, in the end.” ― Steven Moffat Three months after my daughter died, I received an email from a psychic in England, who told me, she’d been contacted by a little girl she believed was India. She said that India’s head hurt and that she was crying for her mummy, but with my consent…

The Ruby Slippers

Dorothy: Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more. The Wizard of OZ (1939) When I was in grade nine, I auditioned for a school production of “The Wizard of Oz.” All the other girls wanted desperately to be Dorothy or Glinda but I wanted to be the Wicked Witch. I admired her fierceness. Unlike…

An Invincible Heart

India, My Daughter
In front of the purple dinosaur
you kiss me, smack on the lips,
then gallop away. Abandoned
to dust bunnies, I follow scattered
crackers, wanting another kiss.
I find you in a place that has
seen cleaner days. We drink tea from
tiny clay cups. Then you find him,
soft fellow with the sea in his eyes.
You drag him with love, by the fin.
Lesley Buxton, 1999