They say mugwort is the ancestral herb, used for centuries to open portals between this world and those that came before it.
I didn’t know that when I started smudging my room with it.

I’d never even heard of smudging until I got to Arran. The farm was welcoming, but the house was strange. At night, I’d hear the front door open and close. Once, I heard a bedroom door handle turn. I lay frozen in bed, wide awake.
The place felt off. I couldn’t rest.

One night, while I was out with a housemate, the others smudged the house with sage. When we returned, the energy was different. Calmer. Like something heavy had finally left the building.

Eighteen months later, that same housemate mentioned she’d been smudging her bedroom, in an effort to sleep, without knowing why she couldn’t. Her words brought it all back. I’d been walking with mugwort, drinking tea made from it, and something in me stirred.

I bound a small bundle of mugwort with cotton thread. Smudged carefully. Let in some air. Went to sleep.

I woke crying.
The dream was Misunderstanding and Violence.
Something had been released—shoved violently out of me in tears.

A few months later, while cleaning, I smudged again. I hadn’t planned to. I didn’t prepare. That night, I woke at midnight—completely alert. I paced the house.
Hours later, I dreamed again: The Break-In.
Only this time, it didn’t feel like my dream.

Both dreams were laced with fear, instinct and attack. Both came after smudging with mugwort. Both now felt like warnings.
I had just been writing about my maternal great-grandmother, Catherine. The woman who gave too much, who overextended past safety.

What if those dreams weren’t mine at all?
What if mugwort didn’t just facilitate dreams, but opened up the dreams of the dead?
What if I didn’t dream about Catherine—
but through her?