We open the cult sci-fi novel from our back pockets and start reading. The story begins — snakes and scars. Letters from a runaway. Study notes and cover versions. A folk song in a new language. A happy ending, and we close the book. 

We try again — a recording studio in Nashville. A second hand bookstore. A bus station, a way station, a seedbank. The Scala and the Jeong. Another ending. 

One more time — a starship powered by desire. A shell revealing our souls. A forest, singing to another forest. High tide.

Again …? 

What do we do when the happy ending doesn’t make us happy?
What do we do with a utopia haunted by ghosts?
How do we know when the story ends?

Seedling, a new stagework from ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, navigates a multiverse in search of beauty and meaning in the unending circular mess of our Queer lives. It’s the ninth chapter of the two-year constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths and a companion to Palace of Ash & Rain which showed at Ballhaus Ost in autumn ’24.