more profile pictures for another friend! i'm honestly quite liking the way i've made glassy/translucent/reflective surfaces, especially when i get to make adorable creatures out of them <3

and I'm making it everyone's problem

“I break open a new moment like a hammer to geode” (detail, 2022)

This piece was in response to The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, which I am always still thinking about. A small sample of the work:

When I looked in the mirror that night I immediately saw the woman that had been humming near the surface of my skin, I mean I really gasped because my reflection was offering me the revelation of a glimpse, a first instant untouched yet by disbelief, disgust, outrage and desire, faith, scalpel, or indistinct blade, untouched by embodiment except for the lightest form of being, just the very first instant of a woman waking up, confused by her own beauty—a woman becoming aware of her existence, an awareness rising like television static, surging, separating into dazzling syllables, silhouettes of meaning sharpening into stilettos of glow, the notes of a falsetto like neon needles cloudbusting from a fog of reverb, the shatteredcandy ballad of a woman singing live on screen in another room, playing her songs on endless loop, whose voice, which I had for so long only heard as buzzing, for years had mistaken for a buzzing—as if god couldn’t spare his angels, so had instead sent topaz mosquitoes, the mosquitoes of heaven—I now understood to be a sweetened scream, a radiation of melody.

I have recommended this book to many people but I always include the warning that it may be a difficult read as it is a memoir that covers self harm, suicide mention, violence, and transphobia. It is also pretty graphic about sex.

That said, maybe one of my favorite pieces of work. Often aching but always breathless. Perpetual swirling. A dizzy joy.

I had pre-ordered a copy but was able to read it well in advance as Aurora was just sending a pdf to literally anyone who was interested. I, a stranger (a Twitter lurker with a private profile), dm'ed her and received a copy in my email no questions asked.

One more line for the road:

I may, at times, dissolve halfway into seafoam, but so does any passionate woman after she turns off her camera.

The Fifth Wound is available from nightboat books or anywhere you buy books.

left: painting of me and one of my exes
right: better painting of some bitch with a snake.
no rules against painting over painful memories!