words & art by shé

bookshelf

Tag: dance

  • Capitana

    “¿Capitana?” asks Guillermina, the manager of Marina Mazatlán. Are you the Captain? “Sí,” I reply, yes, and she smiles widely. A man comes in the office while I am signing the docking contract. “She is the Captain,” she brags, and he gives me a thumbs-up. Role model! Because I am doing what I am supposed…

  • Playlist

    I’d been hearing the opening riff to “Hello I Love You” in my head for days, so I finally latched onto a friend’s Starlink and YouTubed it. Followed by “Sledgehammer,” of course, and “Come Out and Play.” Danced my ass off in the cockpit. To top it off, I played “Ya Habibi” and floated around…

  • Heard

    Anxiety is finally taking a back seat. Feels like years that she’s been driving me around. But now I have a home — Habibi of the Sea. And time and space to write. A publisher contacted me recently. She’s interested in Letters to Lulu, the epistolary novella I penned in 2013, the same year I evacuated…

  • All That Jazz

    Mom liked to travel. One Xmas, her wanderlust was severe. “Where do you want to go?” I asked, and she thought a moment and said, “New Orleans.” “Okay then.” I agreed to go with her to Jazz Fest, which begins the last weekend of April and concludes after the first weekend in May. The food!…

  • Double Fire

    “You are double fire,” says Kokomon after the drumming meditation. “Your father is fire; you are double fire.” I do not ask him what he means, my bones know: I am more powerful than I believe. I can protect myself. It takes a long time — decades — to understand this. I am not stuck.…

  • Voguing Snowgal

    So I was painting the other day, and did a series. Seems to be an Xmas theme with me. In 2019 I filled eight canvases with one giant heart each, some with polka dots, some blue-green, some orange-red: love expressed. I gave them to folks I treasured the most. This year I use ivory black…

  • Filling

    My dentist looks like a Bollywood star. Again. The first time this happened, I was living in Hermosa Beach, and Dr. Bhalla was her name. Not only beautiful, she was kind, sensitive, and listened well. Dr. Ameer, on Kaua’i, is the same, though a different gender. They both have gentle senses of humor. When I…

  • Backward

    On the north shore, there’s a particular reef full of many species of fish, large and small. Sometimes I also see turtles. To access it, I rappel down the cliff, holding onto ropes with both hands and stepping backward. The beach is at the bottom. I also travel backward in time, looking hard at the…

  • Essay #11: support

    “You are not a waste,” said the director’s assistant, while leading me to the restroom to compose myself. I had just mangled “Singing in the Rain” during an audition, finally putting us out of our collective misery by stopping the accompanist, and apologizing for wasting their time. Why I was auditioning for musical theatre, I…