hospital vespers

what i found at the thrift store today

November 29, 2025

-a set of “babylonian tarot cards”, unfortunately missing one card, meaning the cards will now be repurposed as art pieces for scanning, collaging, and gaming. the illustration for today’s blog is from the tarot guidebook.

-a vintage mauve snow jacket from the 1990s

-a vintage belt with a cool buckle. the belt part sucks so i cut the buckle off and put it on a better belt and now it looks even cooler, fun win

-a “magick spell” book journal. to be repurposed for the game scott is writing

-a book about growing up mixed race indigenous

-a vintage pink leather skirt, to be cut up for the indigenous beadwork i do

-a bag of beeswax candles

-a vintage ladies shirt featuring kokopelli the flute player from the 1990s (god the 90s really loved vague indigenous themed items, huh?)

-a really nice scented candle from one of those fancy mall brands that costs way too much money when purchased new ($4 at the thrift tho)

-a homemade sterling silver ring with scrollwork detailing

-a screenprinted greeting card from a fancy art studio in vancouver, bc

-a christmas stocking in pink shaped like a mermaid tail

-a large print of a loon feather because it reminds me of this blog post of mine

-an organic cotton dress from an expensive brand in the uk

-a mauve coloured cotton blazer/cardigan (blardigan?) for work (aka, i want to wear some of my cool vintage and antique brooches so here’s my reason)

if you went thrifting today, what did you find?
mail from katie

November 28. 2025

i dreamed about her again last night, my friend katie who died. maybe it’s because i got a little package from her this week. her husband has been busy selling jewelry she made so those who desire to can have a piece of her very special magick forever.

it’s weird to see the package in the mail sitting unopened on the stairs when i get home from work. i have been having a rough time lately, i feel raw and split open and i both do and do not want to open it because i don’t want to confirm it for myself that the package is from her, but it’s not her.

inside is a note about her life and her legacy and it fucking sucks but it’s beautiful and i cry when i open the pieces of her jewelry that are so delicately wrapped – like the breakable things they are. scott asks if im ok and i say i am i guess but he knows it isnt true so he just hugs me and i cry bitter tears into his sweater that smells like paint and hot glue. he asks me about the pieces even though i know he doesnt care about jewelry, but i dont care about warhammer but at least we share these baffling pieces of ourselves with each other.

i ordered numerous bronze raccoon vertebrae and gift two to my closest people – tom and scott. they both knew who she was and what she meant to me and how much i treasured her and her work. three of us now have these matching pieces of both friendship and mourning.

i can’t talk about katie too much without crying because like, how do i just get over it? she was so young and so bright and so full of life and she wanted to come to canada and maybe we could have visited together. i would have taken her to the victorian era ranch i love, to see the shoes and the old sewing kit and the headstones and the church. maybe we would have dressed up or something. when people die i always end up saying i wish there had been more time.

and i miss her and her messages and the little notes in my endless orders from her shop. it’s not fair you know. i couldn’t wear crosses or other religious symbols for months after she died. how do you make peace with the cold reality of any higher being cutting someone down like that? she was so young.

“de var alla unga” just like erk and academics said in that one song. they were all young.

i miss you, katie.

~

tapestry by katie
who said so?

November 27, 2025

i feel that place inside me and it feels like going home. a stuffy room full of faces of judgement. mouths made up with lipstick tinged with bitterness muttering curses in ukrainian.

my grandmother and her sisters stuck together in pews and church dresses, itchy pantyhose and patent leather shoes, listening to someone talk about jesus and the saints. going home to be beaten by a father who also talked about jesus and the saints.

later, my grandmother took me to that room of judgement of lipstick frowns and i also learned about jesus and the saints and i also went home to be beaten, except she was the one doing the beating. this woman and her rosaries and photos of the sickly martyr christ screaming over top of televangelists on tv or old episodes of jerry springer.

i hated the stuffy rooms and the voices of tv preachers and yet, now, it just feels like home to me. i know these rooms and these voices and this place.

alone in my room surrounded by candles and bones and books on the occult, i listen to old religious vhs tapes and it reminds me of being a child. i get sentimental in church parking lots and when i find old crosses at the thrift shop. they make me think about trauma and violence butted up against absolution and i guess that’s just how the world is and probably always has been.

people shoot up drugs now outside the old church and my grandmother and all the other lipstick mouths i remember are all dead and i never wore lipstick myself so i don’t dare darken that doorway anymore because it smells like piss and pierogis.

jesus is lord? who said so?
they just said i was

November 26, 2025

i like to talk about healing and personal work, but make no bones about it, the rage still lingers inside. just below the trauma informed this and CBT that and recognizing and honouring my protector parts, my firemen parts and my manager parts, is this yearning to just go fucking wild and let it all out. fuck pandora and her stupid fucking box, because if i ever truly let go, you wouldn’t have to worry about snakes and ugly things because you’d hear me roaring from across the world and i wouldn’t stop howling until all the people who fucked me over, who took my innocence, who took and took and took again, would be made to feel all the horror and sadness and misery and loss i have felt.

and i know, i know vengeance is anger and i know anger isn’t real because it’s hurt wearing armour. i know it. but for just a second wouldn’t it feel just like really good and poetic and dare i say righteous to make someone feel as small and shitty as they made you feel? you know, for just a second? wouldn’t that be accountability?

wouldn’t that be justice?

does justice even exist or is that just another lie we all tell ourselves so we can cope better with the fact that assholes get famous and cruel people sleep just fine at night? we know all about the just world fallacy and we still cling to it like frightened children to our mothers skirts. we know this world is cruel and indifferent and yet we strive to see the good and maybe sometimes it just isn’t worth looking for.

wouldn’t it feel really good to just let it all out and howl at the moon and become the monster they made you out to be? they already believed i was so why not show them just how monsters behave? wouldn’t it feel good to just say the nasty thing or leave a mean comment?

wouldn’t it?

no, probably not.

because im not like that.

because i was never the monster.

they just said i was.
we left secrets in the forest

November 25, 2025

you wouldn’t know it by driving this little winding road but, we left secrets in the forest. it’s in the eagle feather that we found and the skipped stones and the campfire we threw bundled sage into. we came as one thing and left as something else, leaving pieces of ourselves scattered along the beach like snail shells and beach glass, old bones like driftwood made smooth by the ever changing water.

somewhere in the coffee black sheets white mornings we shared that stank like firewood and weed, punctuated by incessant laughter, we peeled off our skin and our masks and all the confines and trappings of a complicated world and ran wild amongst the thicket.

we laughed like coyotes, bold and unwavering into the darkness, like we would never die or know pain again. the prideful manner of our dwindling youth echoed back to us as giggles amongst the trees.

we left secrets in that forest, and came back with cedar in our hair, a broken tooth and candy wrappers in our pockets.

can you feel us there in that dark permanence of thorn and branches?

we were here, and we cried bitter tears under running water and drank watermelon iced tea to cover up the taste of blood inside our mouths but you can still see it between our teeth.

the snow comes and covers up the trails we ran, but the trees remember us.

i hear their murmur in my dreams.

we were alive there, you know, just for a while.