Tremendous fun. I picked this up sight unseen based on how much fun I had in her previous trilogy, and it was totally worth it.
Hysterically funny. Also the demisexual rep took me out.
Written 6.9.21. About once a year I try writing song lyrics. Was going for sapphic, sexy, werewolf, fairy tale vibes. Cross-posted to IG.
[Person 1]
Once I sink my teeth into you,
girl, oh girl, I’m not letting go.
Gonna run my tongue along the
length of you, split you right open
and swallow whatever spills
right outta ya.
Girl, oh girl, didn’t they warn you
about girls like me, all roaming hands
and empty stomach, seeking what
will keep me sated, I taste and taste
hoping this one one will keep me warm,
but oh it’s never enough.
If I didn’t sink my teeth into you,
you’d just run away into the night.
I know, because it’s what I did
[Person 2]
Little girl lost, you think this would scare me?
When my home has held more horrors
than the ones inside your mouth?
Let me see what big eyes you have,
let me see what great big paws you have,
let me see what big teeth you have,
and I will learn their shape with my hands,
and open myself up upon their tips.
Oh, little girl who plays as wolf, you think
you are the only one who knows how to hunger? I have
Heard the tales of all the bloodied hearts you left behind,
and I have made myself a perfect invitation for you.
So come closer, let me plunge my fingers
into your pelt, smell the wild on you,
and crawl right into you.
[Together]
Girls like us are made for the kill
running wild throughout the night.
Wolves are not meant to go alone
and neither are girls without a home.
So you and I will go hand in bloody hand,
finding satisfaction ‘neath the roaming moonlight.
I binged these. Once Mask of Mirrors popped off at the 50% mark, I read like… 1100 pages in 3 days? During which I read 90% of The Liars’ Knot in one day. TMoM is broody, but TLK is rip-roaring fun full of humor and identity shenanigans.
Hello, yes, sisterhood of nuns who spin the wind into magic. I need a sequel ASAP about Grace when she’s older and on her pilgrimage. And yes the magic system is cool AF.
Read More »Repurposed 12.7.21. I wrote quite a few love poems in 2021. Many of them weren’t shareable, but some lines I really liked. So I pulled out the good lines, reshaped it, and rewrote it into this. This is the last of the “rocky mountain love” poems. Cross-posted to IG.
I think of you, and the sweetness, the lushness of
speaking with you, and I want to swallow the moon whole.
If I could, I’d write you a love song;
I’d write you letters; I’d court you
with words; I’d comb out your hair,
rub sweet lotions into your skin,
and fold my letters to make you
whatever you wished: a crown, a ring,
a cape as soft as night.
Because you are so very tempting,
and your texts have my heart shining so brightly,
like the moon after their slumber, pulling at my heart
strings, leaving me spinning daydreams of you wringing
every sound I can make, until I am
lost beneath your hands, beneath waters still and deep
until you steal all the words from my mouth and the thoughts from
my ever-spinning mind, because
even my skill with words, bows before your tidal pull
until I am focused just on you
and the way my body lights up like lightning in a storm.
And in that stillness, listen: do I want
you, hands held beneath the covers,
or my fingers inside of you,
do I want the comfort of you in my mouth
like hard candy?
I, I wanna love you like this:
so dearly, as gently as when
a butterfly lands on you,
as fiercely as the sun loves
your skin.
When I don’t know what fantasies to spin,
the easiest ones are these:
our hands linked,
pressed against the bed,
fingernails against scalp,
you holding my hand as
you learn to walk in heels,
me leaning through my fear of falling
and balancing on the handlebars of
your bike.
Written 10.12.21. Kuuleimomi asked: “What does your favorite self feel like? What do you like about them?” An answer in two parts: for when I’m alone and when I’m with others. Cross-posted to IG.
References in Solo:
i. solo
Sun-drenched and
glutted on books,
reaching for my third book of the day
the way I would another bar of chocolate:
guilt-free, shame-free, unrepentant.
This is where I find joy and pleasure,
because there is always room for dessert
or another hundred thousand words.
In as little clothing as possible
(doctor’s orders), the sun fills me up –
firm touch, heat that unravels me, a comfort
I soak in. My skin is always thirsty after all.
And when the wind slips across me,
I think get what Walter Mercado means,
the sensation of turning my head to the sun,
my shoulders to the wind,
the way I would ask a lover for their touch.
Sunlight spilling into me, working its
radiance through me the way Audre once worked
that yellow kernel of color into margarine.
There is nothing more I love than
a good story, the understood boundaries of
my self stretching. I take in whole worlds,
new suns, letting it make my heart
an open door for different ideas,
new knowledge; I let myself be found
in the words of people I’ve never met.
I let this familiar sun fire me, and
with sunscreen and coconut oil,
forge me anew.
ii. duet
Under the sheets and countless blankets,
a mountain of pillows, the kind of bed
I’ve been dreaming of since I was twelve
and read Hawksong. My body and yours,
wrapped up in each other.
I loathe mornings, but with you,
waking up isn’t a struggle,
I rise to waking joyfully.
The closer you hold me,
the closer my spirit holds me close.
Even the exiled parts of me,
cannot resist the warmth between us.
Even the constant spinning of my mind
stops to savor the moment,
thoughts slowed to honeyed speed,
I am nothing but subsumed,
nothing but present
for this long-awaited pleasure.
I’ve held my breath for years,
and now I breath this in,
high on this feeling.
Dom/sub UST. *chefs kiss*
If you read fanfic, don’t miss this self-aware series.
JFC the way this man writes.
JFC what Trungles accomplishes in a debut no less. Patreon.
This makes it onto the list solely for the tenderest bathing scene I’ve ever read.
Kinky OT3? Yes, please!
A delight. I’m still thinking about Chat Guevara. XD
Read More »Everything I love about Jemisin, plus creative world-building around cat memes! Would love to see more from her in this universe.
Ash!! When she faces herself? *chefs kiss* I’ve always loved moments like that. Would’ve loved a longer epilogue on how the lessons in-game effects everyone’s lives too.
Read More »I wanted to close the year out with this letter to myself, written for my thirtieth birthday. There’re direct references to the music videos for Snoh Aalegra’s Whoa, Michaela Jaé’s Something to Say, and Ari Lennox’s Up Late. My go-to tarot deck is Cedar McCloud’s Numinous Tarot, so if you want to imagine the queen of cups, that’s the one I think of. Cross-posted to IG.
I keep coming back to the state of my heart:
Rachel asked long ago, how is your heart;
Denise asked a few years later;
and last week Audra asked me the same thing.
These are small sign-posts in the path my heart has traversed:
when I fell in love, when my heart opened like a flower to the sun;
when at last I held the weight of all my sorrow and let it go – KonMari style;
and two weeks ago I moved from my home of seven years to somewhere new.
Old ways won’t open new doors, the instagram post advises.
New home, new front door, new bedroom door.
What portal do I pass through moving from one house to the next?
What do I claim here, in making this strange place
a home?
I have been single for three years, and there has been a lot in me that has changed:
I am at home in my body, I am present in my body and my feelings, my pleasure comes
lightning quick! And I want to know what my body has learned, what my body has
transfigured. Can you see it, can I feel it, when I dance, when I come apart, when I move.
Romance and sex color relationships in different ways,
a certain slant of light, like driving at night or walking beneath the moonlight.
There are certain things I cannot do alone.
I make magic on my own, and so do you, and you.
I want to know what happens when we fold our hands together.
There are three sides of a triangle, there is strength in numbers.
There is magic
in collaboration and I want to know what grows when we find the magic
of this moment, that can only be made when me, you, and you are here.
I build friendships like people do romantic ones,
I build foundations for redwood cathedrals, I want someone
with me throughout the long years of tending to this grove.
I want to make this a home with you,
to go home to you, to be who you come home to.
And I want to find a harbor for the fierce way I love, my heart sinking its teeth in,
and refusing to let go. When I wonder what it is I give to you, you simply say,
You, I get you. Your brilliant mind, your sharp tongue, the soft give of your body,
letting it come to rest in my hands is the best gift of all.
With forty minutes to midnight, here is a spell:
I want to be read to in bubble baths, loved like whoa;
crown me with love, and I will cape you in flowers, because I’ve got something to say;
and rolling green hills, my oldest dream of all, that keeps me up late.
If there is a longing in my heart,
there is no use denying it.
There is only submitting to it,
letting its water wash over me,
and moving with the tide,
and learning to breathe with it
once again.
Oh magic of my heart, queen of cups,
distill the longing of my heart into a single drink,
let me down it, and no longer deny
here is what I long for,
here is what I yearn for,
let me tell you,
and in the telling,
I call it to me,
I call it to me,
oh heart of mine,
oh heart of mine.
Written 2.20.21. part of the “rocky mountain love” poems. Previous poem here. There’s a direct reference to Mystic’s Neptune’s Jewels. I have one more poem in this series, maybe. Cross-posted to IG.
I record my voice, and send it across
the 1,000 km between you and I,
made short by the internet as a
tesseract, folding space and chance,
so that you and I get to cross paths
and do our best, to hold fast to
one another’s hands.
you and I have made our
texted vows: how you want
my hands in your hair, and how I
want you in my bed to fall asleep
beside. I cannot bridge the time
it takes for vaccines and border
crossings, so I hope my voice
is a light beckoning you to shore,
a promise of homecoming,
a warm blanket and all the
promises of domesticity I want to make
but think it’s far too soon for.
tell me you feel the same,
tell me you will make the same vows,
that when you’re alone with your thoughts,
I am the kind of person you wished for,
and I will show you all the nightly pages
I wrote, imagining you.
I don’t know how to swim,
but I got that moon in 12th house scorpio shit,
so say the word, and I will dive deep with you,
for you. If mystic would dive to bring you neptune’s jewels,
I would dive deep to bring you the treasures from the bottom of our hearts,
and exchange vows written in starlight and rivers, until distance
and time and pandemics is just a story we tell ourselves, laughing
man, remember how we met? because
our ancestors have conspired, and here we are
side by side, in love, in full color,
in full bloom.
A/N: This was mean to be a companion piece to “lessons in consent,” but as I sat with what I’d actually written, I realized this was less about “times I wish I’d said no” and more about touch. (None of these instances are sexual.) So, there’s something to be said for letting a piece of writing sit, and giving yourself and the writing time.
Word count: ~1200
i. retreat
At the opening of the retreat I’m on, the instructor says, “Stand up and turn to the woman next to you.” This is our introduction to one another. The woman to my left and I face and look at each other.
“Get close!” the instructor calls out.
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Esther O. Lee 