This month's postcard club goodies are live on my ko-fi!! Of all the Smol Frens, Nublin enjoys springtime the most, and he's planted an extra special flower garden that everyone can enjoy!Β π·
π’π’π’ I'm hosting a raffle this week on my twitter!! Enter to win this month's postcard bundle ~ raffle ends MAY 10th.
As a pansexual, demisexual cis woman entering another Pride Month, researching and crafting a list of the 100 most influential queer books of all-time was a singular joyβand a LOT of work! Check out the list to see the 100 I settled on, and let me know of the ones you think I may have missed!
"The image of her best friend twirling, ribbons of the dress they had made together trailing behind her, set her heart racing. The serene expression on her face as the music spoke through her had her aching to cup her face in her hands."
It was Reina's first dress.
They'd decided to make it together, in the attic, under the watchful eye of the dust-fogged window and beneath what light wormed its way through the narrowed blinds. She'd bought the fabric with what coin she'd managed to stash beneath her bed. A dime here, a quarter there--anything she managed to snag from the table and the couch and where it wouldn't go missing in any way that mattered.
Her father never seemed to notice.
Eyes always cast over the rim of his glasses, hawkish where they perched over the latest headline blacking out the paper. He didn't notice the fabric she brought home under her arm. Or Reina slipping in through the back window at night to stay well past morning. He certainly didn't notice when the shears went from the kitchen or when the twine and thread fled the drawers. And she was glad he'd forgotten his old waistcoats at the back of the closet as well, where moths made their homes and where she nipped their tarnished buttons.
She knew it would have been easier to work with a thimble, her thumb raw and aching as she pushed the needle through the fabric for the thousandth time. Small dots littered her hands where the needle had caught and stuck fast and made her hiss low and through her teeth. But she was the only one of them with a mother who had taught her to sew. Reina had been shown anything but. And while she chewed the inside of her cheek and pressed the needle through the fabric again, she handed Reina the ribbons to cut down and the buttons to polish and explained the stitches as she worked.
Before the dress was even complete, she realized--as Reina tried her mother's dust-lain Sunday dresses in the low light of the attic--that Reina didn't fit into any of the flats. And the outfit she had planned simply wouldn't do without them. The last of her money went to a pair found in the corner of a dresser's shop, tucked away from the window display and out of the current fashion. They were dull, a bit stained and worn, but perfect in the way Reina collected them in her arms and beamed, wider and brighter than she'd ever seen.
The day she finished the last stitch, her hands were bandaged up to the fingertips and ached fierce enough it bit down to the bone. Reina tied the ribbons onto the shoulders and the bodice for her, and she pointed out where the buttons needed to perch for it to all sit just right. And when the sun had sunk far below its peak, they stepped out into the peach-bathed yard together.
Cicadas cried, high and whining in the limbs of the sagging trees. Reina clutched the dress to her chest, her steps bounced and airy as they made their way to the parched creek bed, where the gnarled rope swing hung off the old bend. It was a secluded little place, one they used to play in as kids until her mother passed and her father deemed it improper to see Reina unaccompanied after.
Reina toed up to the edge of the drop that rolled into the dead riverbed and hummed, whistling a tune that matched the ribbed record stashed in the attic. She joined in, lips puckering as she whistled in time alongside her. Tapping her foot, she settled against the leaning tree and waited for Reina to get ready for the evening.
The dress slid on as easy as a second skin and Reina turned to her with a small smile, before twisting to show where the back of her dress sat opened. She laced up the ties with still aching hands and pulled it tight enough to hold and loose enough to breath. The cicadas screamed in her ears and the sun died out on the horizon, the world turning bruised and purple as she patted Reina's shoulder to let her know she was finished.
Her mother would have seen the heavy clouds and the swollen, violet sky and called the evening an omen. She would have grabbed her by the arm and hoisted her inside, away from the storm only her mother could see brewing. But when she looked up at the beginning of where stars peeked from behind the clouds, she thought about the twilight she could see in Reina's eyes. Where her mother had chased the dark and the night with candle and flame, she had found comfort in it, in the way the trill of crickets and the shadows reached out to hold her...
She mused the ribbon hanging off Reina's shoulder between her fingers. It was smooth, glossed, reflecting the light as she cradled it in her palm. Pulling away, Reina stretched her arms over her head and breathed, deep and long. The kind of comfortable sigh you let out when you rocked back into a chair that cradled your spine and soothed your shoulders in its slatted palms. Reina grinned at her and then twirled in her dress, hands coming up, giddy under her chin. She flapped them and spun again, and laughed. And the laugh crawled, infectious under her skin as she smiled. Her face pulled with it and her chest ached--not in the way it had at the foot of her mother's coffin, but in the way she knew she wouldn't be allowed to hold onto this, onto the way Reina looked like the world had slipped from her shoulders and the way the night dressed her. Her eyes pricked. She blinked away the foolish sting, forcing a breath through her teeth and a grin to her lips. Grabbing Reina's outstretched hand, they spun together.
She couldn't help but wonder what sight they made--
Her and her best friend twirling, the ribbons of the dress they had made together trailing behind Reina, their hands clasped in one anothers. Her face as the music that hummed past both their lips wove through her. She wondered if her father would be able to see the way she wanted to cup Reina's face in her hands. The way she wanted to press her forehead to Reina's and brush her thumbs over the warmth nestled under the smiling dimples of Reina's cheeks. She wondered how much he could--
Reina fell first, tumbling into the grass and she fell after her. Her world spun--from ground to sky to ground--and when she came to a stop she turned her face into Reina's leg beside her and muffled a laugh. Reina punctuated it with her own snorting chortle, the kind of dog-eared outburst that bumped from the chest like a cough and her heart clenched as she hid a grin against Reina's calf.
"Thank you," Reina said, low and against the dark. "For this."
The frogs answered first, in their trills and croaks and high creeks. She swallowed, tongue thick and useless where it sat. Her finger traced over the seam of Reina's shoe and when she smiled it wasn't wide or grand or aching--it was small. It was quiet. It was something she hid as she tucked into herself and let her hair fall across her cheeks and nose.
"I can make you another one."
"Another dress?" Reina asked.
She nodded and propped herself up, looking down at Reina still sprawled in the grass. The dress haloed her, fanned out like clothed moonlight and swathes of pale honey. Reina smiled and she wanted to press her fingertips to the corner of Reina's lips and brush her thumb over where her eyes scrunched up, cradle Reina's jaw like she'd seen her mother hold her father's.
Tavia is already at odds with the world, forced to keep her siren identity under wraps in a society that wants to keep her kind under lock and key. Nevermind sheβs also stuck in Portland, Oregon, a city with only a handful of black folk and even fewer of those with magical powers. At least she has her bestie Effie by her side as they tackle high school drama, family secrets, and unrequited crushes.
But everything changes in the aftermath of a siren murder trial that rocks the nation; the girlsβ favorite Internet fashion icon reveals sheβs also a siren, and the news rips through their community. Tensions escalate when Effie starts being haunted by demons from her past, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical voice during a police stop. No secret seems safe anymoreβsoon Portland wonβt be either.
by Bethany C. Morrow (Author)
Get it here
Bethany C. Morrow is a recovering expat recently returning from six years in Montreal, Quebec, to live and write in northcountry New York. A California native, Bethany graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Sociology. Following undergrad, she studied Clinical Psychological Research at the University of Wales, Bangor, in Great Britain before returning to North America to focus on her literary work. She is the author of the adult novel Mem (Unnamed Press) and the editor of the young adult anthology Take the Mic (Arthur A. Levine Books).
β¦I want to just draw a fashion zine of just Miss Piggy, oh my god. she is so underrated and underutilized, where is my succession-like muppets satire thing LOL I want it so bad. let me do it disney call me pls
"The image of her best friend twirling, ribbons of the dress they had made together trailing behind her, set her heart racing. The serene expression on her face as the music spoke through her had her aching to cup her face in her hands."
It was Reina's first dress.
They'd decided to make it together, in the attic, under the watchful eye of the dust-fogged window and beneath what light wormed its way through the narrowed blinds. She'd bought the fabric with what coin she'd managed to stash beneath her bed. A dime here, a quarter there--anything she managed to snag from the table and the couch and where it wouldn't go missing in any way that mattered.
Her father never seemed to notice.
Eyes always cast over the rim of his glasses, hawkish where they perched over the latest headline blacking out the paper. He didn't notice the fabric she brought home under her arm. Or Reina slipping in through the back window at night to stay well past morning. He certainly didn't notice when the shears went from the kitchen or when the twine and thread fled the drawers. And she was glad he'd forgotten his old waistcoats at the back of the closet as well, where moths made their homes and where she nipped their tarnished buttons.
She knew it would have been easier to work with a thimble, her thumb raw and aching as she pushed the needle through the fabric for the thousandth time. Small dots littered her hands where the needle had caught and stuck fast and made her hiss low and through her teeth. But she was the only one of them with a mother who had taught her to sew. Reina had been shown anything but. And while she chewed the inside of her cheek and pressed the needle through the fabric again, she handed Reina the ribbons to cut down and the buttons to polish and explained the stitches as she worked.
Before the dress was even complete, she realized--as Reina tried her mother's dust-lain Sunday dresses in the low light of the attic--that Reina didn't fit into any of the flats. And the outfit she had planned simply wouldn't do without them. The last of her money went to a pair found in the corner of a dresser's shop, tucked away from the window display and out of the current fashion. They were dull, a bit stained and worn, but perfect in the way Reina collected them in her arms and beamed, wider and brighter than she'd ever seen.
The day she finished the last stitch, her hands were bandaged up to the fingertips and ached fierce enough it bit down to the bone. Reina tied the ribbons onto the shoulders and the bodice for her, and she pointed out where the buttons needed to perch for it to all sit just right. And when the sun had sunk far below its peak, they stepped out into the peach-bathed yard together.
Cicadas cried, high and whining in the limbs of the sagging trees. Reina clutched the dress to her chest, her steps bounced and airy as they made their way to the parched creek bed, where the gnarled rope swing hung off the old bend. It was a secluded little place, one they used to play in as kids until her mother passed and her father deemed it improper to see Reina unaccompanied after.
Reina toed up to the edge of the drop that rolled into the dead riverbed and hummed, whistling a tune that matched the ribbed record stashed in the attic. She joined in, lips puckering as she whistled in time alongside her. Tapping her foot, she settled against the leaning tree and waited for Reina to get ready for the evening.
The dress slid on as easy as a second skin and Reina turned to her with a small smile, before twisting to show where the back of her dress sat opened. She laced up the ties with still aching hands and pulled it tight enough to hold and loose enough to breath. The cicadas screamed in her ears and the sun died out on the horizon, the world turning bruised and purple as she patted Reina's shoulder to let her know she was finished.
Her mother would have seen the heavy clouds and the swollen, violet sky and called the evening an omen. She would have grabbed her by the arm and hoisted her inside, away from the storm only her mother could see brewing. But when she looked up at the beginning of where stars peeked from behind the clouds, she thought about the twilight she could see in Reina's eyes. Where her mother had chased the dark and the night with candle and flame, she had found comfort in it, in the way the trill of crickets and the shadows reached out to hold her...
She mused the ribbon hanging off Reina's shoulder between her fingers. It was smooth, glossed, reflecting the light as she cradled it in her palm. Pulling away, Reina stretched her arms over her head and breathed, deep and long. The kind of comfortable sigh you let out when you rocked back into a chair that cradled your spine and soothed your shoulders in its slatted palms. Reina grinned at her and then twirled in her dress, hands coming up, giddy under her chin. She flapped them and spun again, and laughed. And the laugh crawled, infectious under her skin as she smiled. Her face pulled with it and her chest ached--not in the way it had at the foot of her mother's coffin, but in the way she knew she wouldn't be allowed to hold onto this, onto the way Reina looked like the world had slipped from her shoulders and the way the night dressed her. Her eyes pricked. She blinked away the foolish sting, forcing a breath through her teeth and a grin to her lips. Grabbing Reina's outstretched hand, they spun together.
She couldn't help but wonder what sight they made--
Her and her best friend twirling, the ribbons of the dress they had made together trailing behind Reina, their hands clasped in one anothers. Her face as the music that hummed past both their lips wove through her. She wondered if her father would be able to see the way she wanted to cup Reina's face in her hands. The way she wanted to press her forehead to Reina's and brush her thumbs over the warmth nestled under the smiling dimples of Reina's cheeks. She wondered how much he could--
Reina fell first, tumbling into the grass and she fell after her. Her world spun--from ground to sky to ground--and when she came to a stop she turned her face into Reina's leg beside her and muffled a laugh. Reina punctuated it with her own snorting chortle, the kind of dog-eared outburst that bumped from the chest like a cough and her heart clenched as she hid a grin against Reina's calf.
"Thank you," Reina said, low and against the dark. "For this."
The frogs answered first, in their trills and croaks and high creeks. She swallowed, tongue thick and useless where it sat. Her finger traced over the seam of Reina's shoe and when she smiled it wasn't wide or grand or aching--it was small. It was quiet. It was something she hid as she tucked into herself and let her hair fall across her cheeks and nose.
"I can make you another one."
"Another dress?" Reina asked.
She nodded and propped herself up, looking down at Reina still sprawled in the grass. The dress haloed her, fanned out like clothed moonlight and swathes of pale honey. Reina smiled and she wanted to press her fingertips to the corner of Reina's lips and brush her thumb over where her eyes scrunched up, cradle Reina's jaw like she'd seen her mother hold her father's.
