words & art by shé

bookshelf

Tag: dance

  • Night Sailing

    I did not know I would love sailing at night. No fear, just endless sea and stars. The sound of Habibi’s hull parting the ocean into bioluminescent waves. Wind filling the sails. Learning the navigation system. Keeping watch. Singing. Resting in the cockpit, swaddled in blankets, supremely content. I have always loved the peace and…

  • 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…