Night-time Wishes

Essays, I-IX and Diaries, I-III (2022 – 26) are printed and handbound books to hold a series of archival, non-fiction texts from lunulae.substack.com 

limited edition run, contact for more information.

𑣿 Excerpt 𑣿

Everyone knows that sickness is a euphemism for madness. She thinks it lingers in the hare that lies limp in her arms, and then she knows that it isn't in the hare but at her throat, strangling. She makes herself breathe, slow, cautious like she can't remember how.

The girl makes a list of wishes to give the night. This is the purpose of Night — for rummaging about in your heart while nothing else can see or hear you, dredging out confession that retreats to silence under the light. It is hard to pretend in darkness. It is the loneliest place on earth.

dear Night, I want to be a real girl and I don't know how. It's my first time being human-like and I am afraid and forgetting how I stitched myself together in the first place.

I was a good doll-maker but I am coming back apart now. I want to be rescued, salvaged and made lovely again in the hospital. I never brush my hair, so it is always tangled. I wish to have hair pin-straight and shining, and to have someone to brush it. I know I have read too many tales of living dolls. It is still my wish.

Bindweed

Bindweed (Hazel Press, 2023) is a poetry and prose chapbook. It was born of de Waal's residency at Charleston Farmhouse at the Festival of the Garden. 

limited print run is SOLD OUT.

 𑣿 Excerpt 𑣿

'conversation with bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)'

we get to know each other:
her, pale and sighing, me,
undone. she tells me about
her girlfriend - she is in love,
bloodlets every morning
to keep herself sane (single
incision at the heart like
a ribbon, pulled out and up).
so she is sometimes called
possession, after envy-green
fingers.

to pass the time I read to her
(strange poems, dug out
from soil; root-sick). gossip
about hyacinths (did you hear?
he has a french lover) and
share one tear, one blue
stone. the garden presses to
see. for now we are full up on

our rituals and
on our selves, many. 

Osteomancy

Osteomancy (2025) is a book of interpretations for a divinatory game involving a set of 22 inscribed porcelain teeth.

limited copies available in the UK, contact for more information.

𑣿 Excerpt 𑣿
You stand in the cell of a Dream. There is a pain in your abdomen. You bend over and retch. A tooth is spat into your palm: it is chalky-white and wet from the mouth. Then another tooth, gleaming porcelain. You stare into your hands. Twenty-two white teeth lie in your palm. You try and speak, and cannot, your tongue is heavy and your gums ache and all that was inside you has been turned out and now sits, staring, in front of you. 

You kneel on the dirt and turn down your palms. The teeth scatter like seeds, and glow in their pale, uncanny way against the soil. You close your eyes and pick up one. You open your eyes and read what it is trying to tell you.