In my MFA class at Antioch University Los Angeles, The Uses of Invented Language, Redefined Language, and Foreign Language as Tools for World Building, taught by Rita Bullwinkel, we explored how writers can make language their own by inventing it, subtly altering familiar words to create emphasis, or redefining their meanings entirely.

For this exercise, each writer was assigned a familiar word and asked to redefine it within a fictional world—allowing its meaning to emerge through story rather than explanation. The goal was to let language quietly shape the rules of the world and the limits placed on its characters.

The word canoe was assigned to me.
(I offered the word triptych to my partner.)

In this piece, canoe is redefined as a place a woman goes alone to give birth—a space of autonomy, danger, and taboo. Once she enters, no one is meant to follow.

Below is an excerpt from that exercise.

This piece takes place in an imagined world and does not represent any real cultural practice.

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Canoe (Excerpt)

My feet hit the ground, brush, and sticks, stabbing the soft cradles of my soles. Through the long grass, I saw the floating structure ahead—a long form with a narrow entrance. A fire burned inside it, smoke slipping upward through a small chimney at the back, surely lit by the swamp witch who knew the intentions of my arrival.

I could hear Agatha screaming from afar.

“Jefferson, Jefferson! Wait, my darling—please don’t do this alone.”

Her voice was desperate. This would be her twelfth delivery—four sons, seven grandchildren—and none of them had been born in the canoe. None of them until this one.

My body ached, and a cry escaped me. My stomach clenched in agony. My water had broken long ago, and I could feel the baby pressing downward.

Why didn’t I come sooner? Why didn’t I listen to my intuition? Now it was almost too late.

Agatha had fallen into a deep depression after my husband’s sudden death. She was weakened by grief and fatigue and could no longer keep pace with me.

The ground shifted to wood and rattled beneath my weight. When was the last time anyone crossed this bridge? Surely it was Jagara—the young nymph who once danced in the trees for play, until play led her into the shelter of the canoe.

“Don’t!” Agatha screamed.

I paused at the edge of Siskou Lake, breathing in the stillness, the warm yellow and inky sunset smeared across the water’s surface.

Inside, the canoe was dark and narrow. I followed the fire’s glow, forcing my body through the tight squeeze of mud and hay adobe. At the far end, the space opened into a wide chamber with a rounded ceiling. The hearth fumed softly, smoke slipping through a small vent toward the heavens.

Now the villagers will not choose how this baby enters the world.

I will birth my child here—despite the risk—and from this place, we will grow within our community without being controlled by a system.