A Little Beautiful Garden: Between Woods, Between Worts, Between Daily Lights 

by: Ana Patiño & Maria Karpushina , March 26, 2026

A Little Beautiful Garden: Between Woods, Between Worts, Between Daily Lights uses the idyllic image of a garden as a microcosm, shattered, to reflect the harsh reality of patriarchal practices.

The narrative incorporates various literary genres to create a fragmented storyline. The nonlinearity and diverse genres in this text were deliberately chosen to mirror the fragmentation of memory and lived experiences, and to highlight the varied realities of female embodiment. This fragmented structure echoes those shattered lives affected by femicide and the often-silenced precursor—gendered violence.

To break this silence, the collaborative technique of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ was chosen. It has allowed us, personally, to initiate a dialogue, helping us shatter the barriers that keep those experiences hidden and uncomfortable to talk about. The experience of violence transcends language, age, status, education level, etc. Sharing not only personal but also openly circulated or heard from a friend-of-a-friend stories and experiences becomes crucial. It can amplify a multitude of voices and create social cohesion.

‘Between’ sections of the narrative serve to disorient the reader, mirroring the confusion and struggle of those attempting to escape an oppressive environment. However, within this disorientation, a glimmer of hope for unity emerges, suggesting the potential for change and uniting voices to expose the manipulations of violence.

 

 

BODY

Introduction ~ Female – Exquisite Corpse and Garden

Set of rules ~ Falling Immersed

Between Worts ~ Terminology

Between Woods ~ How Gardens Shape Our Bodies and Our Behaviour

Between Daily Lights ~ All-seeing and All-blinding

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

~ Female – Exquisite Corpse and Garden ~

 

The Exquisite Corpse is a game in which a sheet of paper is folded, and each player draws on it in turn. This exquisite corpse is cyclical.

 

The meeting point is the garden, a natural area created to place the natural environment in the socio-cultural sphere, giving it the appearance most acceptable to a given cultural consciousness. They are places of gathering and domestication, where the master’s vision is transmitted through the study and practice of his powers. The relationship between wilderness and gardens, and the relationship between social intergenerational informality and formality, allows us to think in terms of cultivation. First of all, gardens represent a dialogue between natural and cultural origins.

 

Land without owners and home gardens are often places where hundreds of female bodies have been buried, never to be found. Nature, so despised for years by the dominant self-absorbed vision, as evidenced through the climate crisis, the rates of femicide and trans-homicide also speak of the little value and importance that diversity means.

In order to participate in this exquisite corpse, we need to establish guidelines or rules. However, as much as we have considered it, we have realised that the rules are already predetermined outside this game.

Here is a garden path. As we went deeper, we found ourselves bypassing the main path. This allowed us to see different parts of the garden, whether it was an imaginary or mythological garden or one from personal experience and everyday life.

 

We are at the place of our detour.

 

 

 

SET OF RULES

 

 

~ Falling Immersed ~

 

 

close your eyes:

 

you are at this place

smelling the plants that are closest to you.

near to your home:

you are in that space

the one—frequented by a child,

the one you never had before,

the one that someone called “a garden”,

the one that is already gone.

appreciating the

colours, shapes, and textures,

you recognise

 location of plants.

dwell in that

space, in the smell of a falling recall

with owning your rules as you wish for so long.

open your eyes within that space

present around, in you.

open your eyes to that place

where a void is awakening the route.

 

a void of silence to be untouched,

the void pronounces it pretty much:

between the worts,

the legs, the eyes, the limps;

between…

between in woods,

experiences of our lives

 

I question

in between of daily lights:

does the garden shape my body and behaviour?

 

 

BETWEEN WORTS

 

 

~ Terminology ~

  

Use your voice to help the words take root as you say the words aloud or silently:

 

cultivating———————domesticating

deflowering——————–to take away a person’s virginity

eggs——————————-testicles

fertile—————————–worth it

flower —————————-vulva

gardener ————————patriarch

herbicides————————acid attacks

kick the bucket—————–death

maleza—————————-weed or undesirable plant

mowing—————————hair removal

to root—————————–to connect

transplanting——————-eviction, kidnapping, deportation

 

 

 

~ Character Descriptions ~

 

 

Daisy

likes the garden order and admires the Gardener with a fear of changes. Daisy is very popular and looking to meddle in what is going on.

 

Gardener

lives in a fiction that he created for years, and cares about the garden only when he thinks about cultivation using incalculable tools with a particular normality. He decided to fill the garden’s boundaries with imaginary lines to clarify what belonged to him.

 

Maleza

grows wild and does not speak the same language that the other plants speak in that garden. Despite that, her articulations are enough to root with others.

 

Mushrooms

spread gossip and rumours, gather stories and last words, hiding behind dead plants and malezas.

 

Orchid

gentle, clingy, and slow-in-motion, they initially grew on trees and rocks. Migrated not by their choice, but still welcomed as an ornamental plant.

 

Rose

has a character and gives a velvety vibe.

‘My lovely flower’, named by the Gardener, Transplanted over and over, affectionately fertile

thousands of times.

 

Soil

keeps all secrets and memories alive.

 

BETWEEN WOODS

 

 

~ How Gardens Shape Our Bodies and Our Behaviour ~

or

Excerpts From Garden Conversations in Two Acts

 

 

ACT ONE

 

Orchid:

I don’t know what to make of my name. Did you know that my name comes from the word ‘testicles’? According to the etymology.

Mushrooms told me!

 

Daisy:

(in her own head) Mushrooms?!…

(out loud) Ah yeaaah! Mushrooms. Yesterday afternoon, Mushrooms said that we shouldn’t perform oral sex on the grass because there’s grass on the grass, on the grass. And now, some people seem to want to perform oral sex only after mowing grass. Imagine how does it look to be deflowered nowadays?

 

Orchid:

The grass gets trampled again. After all, my name is what I own.

 

Daisy:

Your name?… I like it! It has a weird sound.

 

 

ACT TWO

 

Orchid:

Does anyone know what happened to Rose? Does anyone know about her?

 

Daisy:

Yeah, she is all over social media.

 

Orchid:

What are you talking about?

 

Soil:

Gardener got rid of her by using herbicides.

 

Orchid:

(between sobs) What happened? Why?

 

Daisy:

Oh, well. You know… She was too popular to seduce. Not first, not last. She was no match for Hortencia—a working mother of ten.

 

Soil:

Peace on Hortencia’s spirit. She will always be with us…

 

Daisy:

In red and tight, Miss Silence. She walked alone at night. Her work and life was a mystery.

 

Mushrooms:

(in chorus) Miss Silence.

 

 Soil:

(ignoring Daisy’s words) Rose was confused by the Gardener’s grooming, and her thorns didn’t hide. A drop of blood fell.

 

Daisy:

She kicked the bucket.

 

Orchid:

No. He killed her over one drop.

 

Mushrooms:

Open your mouth.

Pretend to be a gesture, sound of enounce, even knowing inside our Miss Silence alive.

Miss Silence, that lady that has not yet turned to Loud.

Miss Silence has a tough agreement with Mr. Fear, who keeps her voice freezing, avoiding breaking through to cut the silence, speechless cord. Mr. Fear is overprotective, without piping down, ongoing-talking about the anticipated danger that will return if Loud. Silence is forsaken in gaze, no clarity, just fog.

Occurring overweary, utter loosing-ash elicits seeth in seconds from our Miss. A force without meaning—a precious squeeze. A chest, a cord, a pressure air. And our very Unprepary became a Loud Voice.

 

All Together:

(in chorus) We do not forget you touch one of us—you touch all of us.

We do not forget. We remember their lives. We remember their names. We do not forget.

 

All Together:

Some of us cry and laugh, curse at him, point at him, reject him, behave like him, embrace him.

 

Soil:

Hasn’t he realised that there are more stories? Those written upside down and backward, those that do not speak from him. Without clear structures and forms. We are all one, including him.

 

All Together: (laughing and crying)

 

 

BETWEEN DAILY LIGHTS

 

~ All-seeing and All-blinding ~

  

Maleza:

(on the way to the unknown aloud) Water was dripping from the sky.

Standing here, waiting for ‘good weather.’ An hour goes by, and two go by, but the rain does not stop. Here, not feeling legs anymore, arms and chest, everything has flowed out and nourished the ground. Hair, nails, hills, and hips extend, viscosified in a very limping, creeping, wriggling, and crawling around manner, softened, mimicking liquidity, and dispersed. And why stand here if there are no legs and nothing to sit on? Nothing but the water.

Licking, dropping, huge drops filled up my leads. Drowning in a pond of thought, swimming up to the last pinch of my body. Rain keeps knitting rain garb. Constant in change and change in constant—clashing, bobbling, brooming.

sleeping, speaking, walking.

sleepwalker, speakwalker, swimmwalker

i am a water

without voice

with a choice.

social whisper

try me

drink me

look at me

take me

all about me

not `bout u

me—as an object

 

talking without voice,

without choice.

 

Whir me, baby, just one more time, like a whisper in the ear—a simple sound similar to cicada and cricket songs. Unbearable quietness and just one colour—mono.

Don’t be so solid; there is no desire or fear to fall apart. Don’t be afraid—come closer to the deep, into the waterface, and reduce the air between your forehead and surface. There, face to face, her voice will whisper marbles with a small number of echoes, times, and lights.

Circles on the water, circles under my eyes—like dripping myself inside out, like a mother on daughter, like a mother on a mother, as all generations fill themselves. Pouring a river through endless expanses, feeling no more barriers, carrying the seeds under their armpits and folds. I will sleep to meet myself, to meet that forgotten water of the times, carrying the tranquillity of lullaby sleep.

And the water will come, like a whisper in the ear, singing softly chants of the past, evaporating in phases, thoughts, becoming a knowledge seed.

 

~ A gathering took place in a hiding place in the garden ~

 

Mushrooms:

(murmured to the others the many stories that had led to the overthrow of various gardeners in the past)

“You exist because of me!

I am your king, and I will always be your king”.

 

Some of them:

(laughing as they heard the last words of a forgotten gardener before he was gone)

 

Soil:

(respectfully asks for patience as the Maleza is about to begin her intervention)

 

Maleza:

(articulating her whole body, she reaches all the plants in a subterranean way through the roots she tells them)

I was told this by my ancestors. It’s about the Madremonte.

There is no direct translation for Madremonte, but it is something like mother vegetation, mother wildlife, mother forest, mother jungle, mother mountain. You get the idea.

The Madremonte is a kind of female figure covered in moss and branches, dressed in leaves, with a straw hat covering her face and eyes like ruby fireflies.

She lives in tangled places with leafy trees, away from artificial lights, and prefers warm forests and animals without leashes.

Madremonte has powers over the weather and the vegetation; she takes care of the forest and the jungle.

Her cries can be heard on dark nights and during dangerous storms. When she bathes in rivers’ headwaters, they become muddy and overflow, causing floods that create new paths. She punishes those who encroach on land and fight over boundaries, the disloyal and unfaithful ones.

Makes them see an unapproachable mountain or a tangle of reeds or bushes difficult to pass, obscuring their path and causing dizziness from which they awaken only a few hours later, convinced that it was nothing but a hallucination and that the road they had been travelling on was the same one…

 

Mushrooms:

(begin summoning) Madremonte…

 

Orchid, Soil, Maleza, Daisy:

(follow them) Madremonte

 

All Together:

MADREMONTE.

small seeds are growing.