Brenna Layne

From the obligatory high school English reading of Wuthering Heights, I have slowly made my way over the past three decades through the novels of the Brontë sisters. For my sixteenth birthday, m...

https://brennalayne.com/2024/01/20/the-last-bronte/

At some point over the last few years, without realizing it, my literary ambitions have evolved. Since I began writing with the aim of a career as a writer, my goal has always been traditional pu...

https://brennalayne.com/2024/01/01/what-happens-when-limitation-falls-away/

I do not know why these bells are here. They look old. They feel significant. The cord that connects them is fraying, but seems to have been carefully braided at some point long ago. At some poin...

https://brennalayne.com/2023/08/06/three-brass-bells/

they say that you cannot but i say that this is only the beginning of the sentence you cannot go home again if your home has been stolen destroyed rendered uninhabitable altered beyond the compas...

https://brennalayne.com/2023/07/23/a-small-spell-for-going-home-again/

In some past years, I’ve set reading goals for myself–a certain number of books in a year. Somehow, when the pandemic hit, I stopped reading. I’m still not sure why. Normally I’m a voraci...

https://brennalayne.com/2023/01/08/a-year-in-the-books/

I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” William Butler Yeats The widening gyre of the year spins outward as ...

https://brennalayne.com/2022/12/31/back-to-the-place-where-all-the-ladders-start/

There is so much I did not expect. I did not anticipate exactly how it would feel to inhabit a heat-hating body in the subtropics. I did not expect it to be *constantly* hot. Basically, it has be...

https://brennalayne.com/2022/09/25/pumpkin-spice-emotions/

Several years ago, I was blogging weekly. A few years ago, I embarked on a daily Emily Dickinson poem project. Now, a pandemic-in-progress later, I can’t seem to get to the page. My progress on...

https://brennalayne.com/2022/09/11/broken-2/

It happens every year, constant as the migration of birds, as the earth’s loop around the sun. Sometimes I think it’s not going to happen, not this year. And then, inevitably, it does. The fi...

https://brennalayne.com/2022/08/07/reentry/

I had a plan. I usually have a plan. What doesn’t usually happen is any kind of linear arriving at the fulfilment of said plan. My plan for this morning: get up. Get dressed. Do the lower-back ...

https://brennalayne.com/2022/07/17/distraction/