Letters to the Dead: Shadow Writing for Grief & Release

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

In the book, The Art of Death: Writing The Final Story, Edwidge Danticat writes with profound openness about her mother’s death. The book explores writing on death, in some effort to explain how to write it, and it get rights to the heart of the matter. Danticat mentions Mary Gordon’s memoir, Circling My Mother, in which Gordon states that writing was the only way that she could mourn her mother.

It was described as an active grief. That made sense to me; some grief is inert. Some grief is an engine. Sometimes actively participating in grief, I’ve learned, is one small way we can learn to escape its riptide.

In a way, when we mourn and when we write, we are weaving an indelible memory. We can do something with the grief.

Two years ago, I lost two people who were close to me. The grief was tidal, and I was at sea. Nights were underscored by anxiety around what I could have or should have done, obsession on mortality and meaning, and nostalgia like a drunken swirl. My days were hazy, weary, long. At work, I was distracted. At home, I was restless. I was caught between trying to live and trying to let go.

Grief if a sickness that grows without cure. It affects more than the body, more than the mind. It affects the essence of us, our starstuff, our souls, our hearts, our energy. It metastasizes over a lifetime, and with each new death it takes a new organ. I’m only 33. I’ve got a way to go. You may be further.

My aunt, just before she died, asked me over the phone what I’d be doing that night. Her voice was so small, so sick, so tired, but I could tell she was trying to sound enthusiastic. She was one of those rare beings who emanated an effortless and natural light; she was full of the beauty of this life, and you couldn’t help but feel it. I wish I spent more time with her when she was alive. I wish she knew that.

“I’m going out to listen to some music,” I told her. I was going to see a symphony. 

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🕯🖤 Although it may be “morbid” to spend your time in a cemetery—which, whatever!!— I think there’s something beautiful about spending your day in a place of silence, connection, and reflection, which is untouched by the masses and completely sacred, filled with relics and memories and ghosts of times gone bye and today. It is a place that allows you to think on what it means to be alive right now in this moment, lets you understand just how small you are in the vast story of everything. I have never been shy about graveyards or cemeteries, & I think it’s because I’ve always had 1 foot in and 1 foot out, splayed over the veil. I would like to do this more often, spend more time here. Living in New York City, I could spend my time at jam packed Central Park, or I could spend my time in a sprawling and powerful place — of many acres, and of many stories. 🖤🕯Thank you @historicgreenwood for creating an inclusive and friendly and beautiful environment #deathpositive

A post shared by Lisa Marie Basile (@lisamariebasile) on Nov 18, 2018 at 5:30pm PST

“Well, dance...for me, honey!” she said in her thick Virginia accent. My aunt loved to dance. She danced every week until she couldn’t. In that way, she worked her way into my DNA.

“I will, Aunt Ruthy, I promise,” I told her. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her it was a symphony; I wouldn’t be dancing. The point is, I would dance for her. And I would remember to dance forever.

After she died I swung between regret and anger. Why did she have to suffer? Why do bodies simply expire after living and giving birth and making art and making love? How could that be the end for each of us? I regretted not dancing more. I regretted not calling her more before she passed.

And so when she died, I took to the journal to write a letter. Journaling was one of the only things that made sense; I was able to say everything out loud, rather than keep it boxed up, throat-less. Without shame, and without censorship. 

When I finished the letter, I placed it in a wooden bowl and burned it. You may want to burn it, bury it, or store it in a box. There is magic in transforming your memories into words and then your words into foreverness by casting it out. No matter your religion or belief, you’ll be pulling the wound out of your body and onto paper. 

The very act of embracing your feelings around death, summoning the memories of your dead, and inviting them into your space through the page is powerful'; it is a conjuring on many levels. And it is a great way to embrace the death positive philosophy, which encourages people to speak openly about death, dying, and corpses. While no philosophy can remove the eternal sting of death’s pain, this philosophy helps to lessen the shame, fear, confusion, and stigma attached to death and grief.

The Ritual: Writing Letters to Your Dead

Choose who you’ll write to, and what you want to say. Your letter can be written on paper or electronically. You may speak it into a audio recorder, type it out, or write it by hand. What feels right?

Do you have a photograph of them? If so, place it before you. Light a candle and look into the flame. Think of this flame as illuminating a way for them to come home, to you, to your room, to your side.

Sit here for a bit. 

What was it about them that stood out to you? What was it you never said? What do you wish you knew about them? What was it you wish you did with them? What are their quirks? What fabric did they love? What perfume? How did they look when they entered the room? What did they sing to themselves? What’s your loveliest memory of them? If they did anything to inspire you, what was it? What did they love? Children? Plants? Books? Art? Travel? Poetry? What mark did they leave when they left this earth? 

Some grief is extra complex. Perhaps the person who passed away was someone who hurt you but whom you still mourn. If so, acknowledge this. What did they do to hurt you? What have they done that has never been resolved? How has it hurt you? Can you forgive them? Can you work on forgiveness? There is no shame in not reaching forgiveness; this is a personal act. 

Open the letter, “Dear [NAME],” and then go as naturally as you’d like. You can remain in the positive, or tell them everything you miss about them. You may want to tell them the hard truth; you may to let the rage out of its tiny, silenced box. Or, maybe you want to tell them it’s okay to go. Perhaps they felt they had to stay? Perhaps they suffered? Maybe you simply want to know what it’s like to be dead. The letter can be structured or wild. This is up to you.

The important thing is that you’re honest and that you say everything you want to say, no holds barred. 

When you are finished, you may want to put the letter away, or let it go. You may want to leave it near their grave. You may want to burn it. Or, you may want to keep it. 

You may do this whenever you feel the urge rising up. Maybe you make it a point to do write to them with each new moon, or on their birthday.

Whatever feels right to you is what is right for you.

An ending note: If you are afraid of the darkness (this is shadow work) involved here, keep your environment comfortable and comforting. Have objects of happiness and light around you. Make sure you have a support system on speed dial. Be sure to take care of yourself afterward. Part of diving into the abyss is knowing your way out.

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💕 This glorious photo was taken by @slavwitch, and it’s accompanied by a detailing of why objects—the things we choose to surround ourselves with— can be so powerful. As @slavwitch says, it’s not about *having stuff* but about painting our lives with the energy and power that the objects hold. Really lovely to see @lightmagic_darktimes as part of someone’s magical space. Thank you! 💕

A post shared by Lisa Marie Basile (@lisamariebasile) on Jan 10, 2019 at 12:24pm PST

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine—a digital diary of literature, magical living and idea. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices. She's also the author of a few poetry collections, including 2018's "Nympholepsy." Her work encounters the intersection of ritual, wellness, chronic illness, overcoming trauma, and creativity, and she has written for The New York Times, Narratively, Sabat Magazine, Healthline, The Establishment, Refinery 29, Bust, Hello Giggles, and more. Her work can be seen in Best Small Fictions, Best American Experimental Writing, and several other anthologies. Lisa Marie earned a Masters degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

Old Grandma: A Ghost Story

BY SARAH FADER

When my son, Ari, was three years old, he started seeing things. Now, they weren’t hallucinations, but he is a spiritual child and is highly intuitive. One day, in our brownstone in Brooklyn, Ari was trying to sleep. He had trouble getting himself to bed and seemed preoccupied. He was looking in front of himself as if there was someone or something standing there. I asked what he was looking at and he said “old grandma is here!” I said “do you mean grandma?” and he replied “no, old grandma! She’s wearing black and white and she visits me sometimes.” I immediately knew that he was looking at a ghost. I wasn’t creeped out, because I believe in spirits and I believe in ghosts. I’ve never seen anything myself, but I know that my child is very connected.

I’m an intuitive individual. I do read tarot and believe in things that are “new age-y,” so I wasn’t surprised that my child inherited that quality. In addition to Ari seeing this “old grandma” person, I noticed some strange things about my house. One of the things that happened during that time period is that when our house became messy, objects would fall on the ground randomly, and would often shatter on the floor. For example, there was one instance where there was a pile of papers on the table in the kitchen and a mug was on top of them. The mug wasn’t in a precarious position, but I saw it fall on the floor and break. I knew that this was the result of a spirit, and I connected it to the woman that Ari was seeing. I had my friends mother come over and see if she detected any ghosts because she is Brazilian and comes from a background that prompted her to believe in ghosts as well. I find that cultures outside of the United States are more open to these things.

I decided to ask her if she’d check it out. There were two doors that lead to my office. During the evening, the doors would abruptly slam shut. Sometimes, they’d do this during the day, but it was mostly at night. I asked my friend's mom if she’d take a look in the office. As soon as she approached the office, the doors slammed in her face and almost hit her nose, I knew that something was up. The doors weren’t closing because there was wind blowing or anything like that. They were randomly shutting and I was extremely confused. My friend's mom said that this “old grandma” person was a Victorian lady, she suspected. Rather, I told her that I thought it was a Victorian woman because that’s what I picked up on using my own intuition. Plus, I knew that the brownstone was old. My friend's mom talked to this “old grandma” person and found that she was there because she wanted to protect my kids.

Upon discovering this piece of information, I was not afraid of her. I still found it annoying that she’d knock things over and break them. Another thing is that she didn’t want to leave our house. Old grandma was upset when the house was messy and would break things frequently to express this to us. I asked my friend's mom what to do to fix this situation, and she said that the old woman was stubborn. “Old grandma” wouldn’t leave.. She wanted to look after the kids, and for me to keep the house clean. I’m disorganized and messy; I have ADHD, so this is understandable. My ex-husband was the cleaner of the relationship, so he took care of that more often than I did.

Old grandma visited Ari for years. I used to ask him about old grandma periodically because I wanted him to remember her. Now, he’s ten years old. I asked him about her the other day to see if he recalled anything. He doesn’t remember the story at all, which is interesting. We’ve since left Brooklyn, but I believe that “old grandma” is still there, hanging out on the third floor of my old home on Bergen street. If you’re reading this, old grandma, hello! Thank you for influencing us to keep our house tidy. The lesson that I want readers to take away from this is that if you’re living with a ghost, you don’t need to be afraid. They may not be harmful. They might actually be there to help you (or, in my case, remind you to clean.)

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Sarah Fader is the CEO and Founder of Eliezer Tristan Publishing Company, where she is dedicated to sharing the words of authors who endure and survive trauma and mental illness. She is also the CEO and Founder of Stigma Fighters, a non-profit organization that encourages individuals with mental illness to share their personal stories. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Quartz, Psychology Today, The HuffingtonPost, HuffPost Live, and Good Day New York. Sarah is a native New Yorker who enjoys naps, talking to strangers, and caring for her two small humans and two average-sized cats. Like six million other Americans, Sarah lives with Bipolar type II, OCD ADHD, and PTSD. Through Stigma Fighters, Sarah hopes to change the world, one mental health stigma at a time.

Let This Scorpio Walk You Through Scorpio Season

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

I don’t care whether you believe it or not, the Scorpio exists. If it’s not a personality carved out by the celestial, then it is most certainly an archetype born out of real-life human beings, the kind—like me—that drinks, breathes and moves about attached to some chthonic place. We are the people who were born rummaging through the dark. We were the kids who weren’t like the others. We were the adults who realized our strangeness is actually power. Grew into our wings.

Scorpios, I’m talking to you here—but if you love someone who is a Scorp, it’ll benefit you too: It is like we cipher what we need from the darkness just in order to make it through the day. It could be that we drain a crowd of its mass energy—taking just a little bit from you there, and you there, and you over there so that no one aches for what went missing, or it could be that we consistently keep one foot in the otherworld, always dreaming, always obsessing, always plotting. It could be that we expertly speak the language of endings. Because we know endings mean something comes next.

Ruled by Pluto, lorded over by death and sex, we are intrinsically linked to the body—the body as sigil, the body as engine, the body as an immutable thing, and, of course, the body as a thing with an end-date. We can’t seem to ever really live here, on earth, in our town, in our houses, in our workplaces—because a part of us always off somewhere bent over in a corner, meddling, whispering, hiding, licking our wounds, or opening them.

Sure, for the secular among us, it could be that the zodiac is nothing more than a tool for suggestion. Like some view Tarot, for example, astrology provides a map for meditation—rather than being a stone-cold, steadfast, set-in-stone reality. (I mean, hello, "13 signs"—no Scorpio is going to fucking budge, no way). When you’re a scorp, you know it. It’s not like the Aquarius who says "Yes, I am eclectic!" or the Leo who chants, "Look upon me!" Or even the dreamy Pisces, who, like the three water signs (Scorp included) is also always attached to otherworlds. A Scorp is a Scorpio is a Scorpia. Even if you don’t want to be a Scorpio anymore, you’re stuck with us. Trying to hide it is akin to being drunk. You might be able to get around, but you’ll never feel quite right.

Scorp might even influence you if it’s in your chart or, say, your moon sign. Either way you know it. You can feel its pincer spread inside you. You can feel its poison push through you whether you want it or not. When Scorp  has you, she has you. I can’t tell you differently. 

So brings us to Halloween season—scorpio season. This time of year has always been magical for me (surprise, surprise). I was born November 3—right after all the beautiful festivities honoring the dead (were I to be a Halloween child, well, I curse the universe for failing me…). I’ve always felt most alive now, and with all the talk of Scorpio season, I feel at home, like I’m understood, like I’m seen—not just banished to the shadows of scorn and sex and wound and water and darkness.

But the scorpio is more than Scorpio season. And we’re more than the qualities we’re usually defined by. As sexy and intimidating and intoxicating as we seem, I believe that Scorp is, in equal measure, made from darkness and light. Capable of immense transformation and instrospection, this sign—and its wild season—is a time when we can confront the shadow and find good it in. Find a home in it. Become comfortable with our discomforts. Especially around loss, grief, fear, body, desires, and identity. Do not worry that this season will bring out your ghosts and leave you scared and haunted and overwhelmed—because you can harness all of that and use it to your benefit. (And just think: For some of us, it’s always Scorpio Season. If you don’t live in this place in perpetuity, consider yourself, well, lucky?). 

But for just this season, transient and ending, you can indulge.

Some of the indulgence tips I include below are therapeutic in a very DIY way. I encourage you to seek professional help if you feel you need it, though. Working through your pain or grief on your own is one thing, but if you feel you need help, do ask for it. The Scorpio would want you to be good to yourself, even if she doesn’t always express it.

Here are some ways Scorpio Season can be curative—if you work it, rather than fear it.

1.Keep a shadow journal.

Here is where you’ll write down all those secrets, all those fears, all that loss, all those people you miss, all that pain. You want it out, and down. You want to sit with it, read it, accept it, and know that these secrets are safe (the scorpio is very secretive, which can make her sick). But mostly, being able to feel a little more comfortable with your wounds can actually lessen their sting.

2. Power your transformation.

If you want to be the person who stops showing up late, or the person who finally lets himself feel loved, or the person who wants to speak up when you think you ought to, scorpio season is the time to make those efforts. With scorpio’s intense transformative powers, this is the time to apply all that energy. You might here of scorpio’s death wish, but really it’s the fact that scorpio feels the need to transmorph, to kill a part of themselves off (give birth to another) and send it to the grave. 

3. Talk to the dead.

Scorpio is the sign of the dead, sure. We all know that. And while that might mean Scorpios are busy walking that liminal space, it doesn’t mean you can’t join them. Whether the veils are literally or metaphorically open—because many people and Scorps are secular and don’t really believe this season is really a time of spirits—it’s still a good time to meet grief head-on. (Again, see note above around seeking professional help if you can’t move through grief on your own).

I like to write letters to my dead, sometimes I like to bury those letters, and sometimes I like to visit those graves or places where the dead are and just talk. I took part in something called Into the Veil a few weeks ago, where I recited poetry in a graveyard. The event was produced by Atlas Obscura, and was a truly death positive evening in that it allowed visitors to discover art and transformative ritual around death. The more we sit with it, the more we acknoelege it, the less power it holds over us—at least that’s the theory. It may be hard to stomach (for me, it was), but being surrounded by all those tombstones meant something: Life regenerates, life moves, life ends, memory lives, memories mean something, and that we ought to to live while we have the chance—live for our loved ones who cannot. Who didn’t get a long enough chance. This scorpio season, sit with the dead, or your dead, and just try to find a way to make peace. It’s probably different for all of us, that way, but it can yield beautiful results.

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief and creative director of Luna Luna Magazine. She is also the moderator of its digital community.

Her work has appeared in The Establishment, Bustle, entropy, Bust, Hello Giggles, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, greatist, Cosmopolitan and The Huffington Post, among other sites. She is the author of Apocryphal (Noctuary Press), war/lock (Hyacinth Girl Press), Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York) and Triste (Dancing Girl Press). her book, nympholepsy, was a finalist in the 2017 tarpaulin sky book awards.

Her work can be found in PANK, the Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, The Huffington Post, Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, The Atlas Review, and tarpaulin sky, among others. She has taught or spoken at Brooklyn Brainery, Columbia University, New York University and Emerson College. Lisa Marie Basile holds an MFA from The New School. @lisamariebasile

An Open Letter to My Nipples

BY CHLOÉ ROSSETTI

*The author wishes to express this content warning: sexual assault, and child sexuality.*

This essay is part of Enough Enough Anthology, a project by Lexie Bean for trans and non-binary survivors of sexual assault/domestic violence to write letters to their body parts. Submissions are open until August 1st. 

The anthology will be published in book form with Jessica Kingsley Publishers in spring 2018.

I

FIXATION

    Nipples, I think about you constantly.

II

THE LET DOWN

    let down n. The release of milk in a nursing mother or lactating animal

I had another top surgery dream last night.

In this vision, a group of friends and I had all traveled en masse to a far-off, tropical locale—not the usual Florida; maybe New Orleans?—to support a friend’s top surgery. It was humid; frangipani air hung on the body. It felt magical.

The friend was laid out on a white sheet, unconscious in a way that seemed more like they were having a very sweet dream. We were all sitting in a circle in the open air around this friend while the surgeon performed the deed. We were holding sacred space; chanting; praying; smiling; singing.

The surgeon, who was genderless, also felt like a spiritual practitioner, as surgeons sometimes do. The way that they performed the top surgery was so gentle and noninvasive that the scars were barely visible afterward, and the nipples, maintaining their sensitivity, didn’t have to be moved.

Everybody hung out afterwards, and there was food and costumes and dancing; it felt like a Mardi Gras, perhaps like the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras of my Australian adolescence.

It was dusk. People were drunk. There were fireflies.

I saw my former roommate there.

“I had another top surgery dream last night,” I admitted.

He smiled at me.

This is a very sweet top surgery dream, I think. Usually, when I have top surgery dreams I am trying to breastfeed, but all I have are drainage pumps full of milk.

I really, really want to breastfeed.

Sometimes, when my partner sucks on you the way he does—gorgeous, sensuous, feminist—I feel like I want him to keep doing it until milk, laced with oxytocin, springs from you into his mouth. Then he and I will be bonded: like mother and child, like kin, like lovers. This is not shameful to me. I am kinky and I have many kinks. But I’ve thought about it a lot, Nipples, and wanting to nurse is not my kink. If anything, it is my recovery.

    let down n. A decrease in size, volume, or force

    My first boyfriend and I, and you, were 16 when we started dating. He was my first kiss. None of us had made it past first base before. You and I hadn’t even made it to a base before.

    He was obsessed with sucking on you; remember? He started doing it a month after we started dating—without asking. We would make out, and then he would almost immediately lift up my shirt and start sucking, like I were a soda machine at an all-you-can-eat buffet. I felt sick, dead.

    This wasn’t meant to be your introduction to pleasure, Nipples.

    Once I remember him doing it in public, at night, walking down a suburban street to his house. We were making out, giggling, frolicking. Then he stopped me, lifted up my shift and bra, and, to quote Bikini Kill, sucked my left one. Do you remember that?

    Do you remember the things that happen to you?

My left breast was, and still is, smaller than the right one. I remember when, noticing this while sucking away at you, he looked up and said to me, “This one just needs a little more encouragement” and sucked on that one for longer.

I withered inside and stayed small, Nipples.

    I remember when we were 17 and away at a junior national fencing competition, reuniting and reveling with teen fencers from around the country. I was hooking up with a hot female friend in front of my ex and his friend. It was for us, not them. They were just there. My ex toasted over us—as in pretended to have a glass of alcohol, or perhaps did have a glass of alcohol, and made a toasting gesture, verbally admiring the view with his friend. Something along the lines of “We’ve got booze, we’ve got a view…”

    I blocked them out of my hazy, drunken mind. I was busy. My hot friend was giving me head. It was none of their business.

    My ex’s friend moved over to me and saw that you were exposed, erect.

    He sucked on you. He did not ask me.

    The next day, I told some friends. They laughed at me.

let down n. A disappointment or a feeling of disappointment

    There was a woman I was in love with in my high school friend circle. We hooked up a couple of times back then. We haven’t spoken in years, not since she moved to the east coast of Australia, leaving her history with all of us behind.

In her later teens she behaviorally fled her Christian fundamentalist upbringing and troubled familial support system, spiraling out into drugs and unsafe promiscuity. She lied a lot. She clung to her arms in her sleep until she bruised. She fucked my boyfriend/ex-boyfriend. She hooked up with my crush in his bed while I was in the next room, unaware and still hopeful. When I moved to the States for college she moved in with my ex, or so I heard years later, and they told everybody that they were in love. And then she moved to the other side of the country to rejoin her family and religion, getting married to a guy who sexually assaulted her.

They have a baby now. Are they happy?

    I loved sucking this woman’s nipples.

    One time, she stood over me and lifted up her white singlet halfway, exposing the bottoms of her breasts. She posed for me, tugging on her cap and miniskirt, thrusting out her hip: a slutty cheerleader. I lifted up her shirt and starting sucking. I didn’t ask her.

    Another time, at a family-and-friends-type party at her parents’ house, she had a panic attack. I followed her upstairs to comfort her. She told me that her father, who always unsettled me, had been sexually assaulting her. I had many questions I didn’t ask.

    This scared me out of my queerness for almost a decade.

    I still have a great sexual appetite for people with breasts, though I rarely act on it now. I theorize that I am still too wounded from what went on before. That’s part of it, I’m sure. Mostly, though, I’m afraid to violate the breast-havers with my desires.

    I play it in my head, over and over: I see my lover’s breasts and grab them with my taking-hands, letting all the toxic masculinity deposited onto—into—me by so many bodies ooze out at once. My lover withers, as I did, becoming distorted and fixated too.

    Maybe I was always destined to be a breast- and nipple-lover.

    I drank so much breast milk from my mother that she had to pull me off her, lest I sucked her dry.

    One time, when I was less than two years old, we were in the bath with her. You were tiny back then. I twisted my mother’s huge nipples and cried out: “Pretty buttons!”

    My first crush was Jessica Rabbit. I would stare at her breasts and get hot between my legs. I was three. I rewatched Who Framed Roger Rabbit? until I wore out the VHS.

    As soon as I learned to draw, I would draw Disney-princess-type women in princess-cut dresses with Jessica Rabbit proportions: enormous breasts, tapered waists, blue eyes, blonde hair, massive lips, long lashes. I was an overweight “wog” girl—frizzy brown hair, big nose, double chin—and half a boy inside.

    I wanted to be Princess Jasmine. I wanted to fuck Princess Jasmine. I wanted Aladdin to fuck me. I wanted to be Aladdin.

    When I was seven, my friend came over and taught me how to make my Barbies make out with each other, topless, undressing each other with their plastic knife-hands—clothes getting stuck on right-angle arms—and fondling each other’s nippleless breasts.

    Later in the scene, I made a Ken doll assault a Barbie, and then I made Barbie take Ken to court for sexual harassment. I made my friend do Barbie’s voice in the courtroom. I fed her the lines. My friend didn’t want to. She was seven too.

When I was ten I saw a dance performance with my family: a dark-haired man and a blonde, statuesque woman were doing the tango. The woman looked like Barbie. The man dipped the woman and lifted her back up; she kissed him passionately, grabbing his face with both hands. I wanted the woman to kiss me. I wanted to be the man.

III

MAGIC

    Recently, a new lover fucked me without asking me. We were in bed together. Things escalated. I couldn’t find my “No.” I cried the next day. He listened.

    Before the fucking, this person told me that my breasts were “magic,” because he sucked on you, Nipples, and I had an orgasm.

    I’m still amazed by your superpower. You give me orgasms. Nipplegasms.

    And you know what? My breasts are magic. Pendulous, soft, and creased with colorless stretch marks, with huge alveoli and a hair or two around the edge. They hang heavy, and taper beautifully into the soft points of you. They are gorgeous. You are gorgeous, and you are highly responsive. You give me orgasms. You are magic.

IV

DESIRE

    This was what I masturbated to as a horny sixteen-year-old with a nipple fixation:

    Fantasy #1: Coming into my hot 34-year-old high school teacher’s office and begging for an A. Opening my uniform (a colonial-chic navy Aboriginal-print dress with a tie) to reveal my pert teenage breasts. We make out. I put his hand on my right breast and he fondles me. I guide his head toward you, Nipples, and he sucks on you. Then the principal is about to come into his office. I hide under his desk, which has an opening for legs but is opaque otherwise. He sits at his desk, hiding me from the open side, and bids the Principal enter. I unzip his fly and suck his dick to climax while he speaks with the principal, barely stifling his pleasure. I greedily suck his semen down.

    Semen is a bit like breast milk, don’t you think?

    Fantasy #2: I am a journalist covering an event at the Playboy mansion. I have on a black pencil skirt with matching garter stockings and pointy black pumps. My white sheer blouse reveals a sexy black bra, with matching high-cut, black lacy underwear.

    The Playboy bunnies are wearing outfits that look like black bathing suits with holes to let their gravity-defying breasts poke through. The holes and edges of the suits are laced with white doily fabric. They look like French maid bunnies.

    One of the bunnies is assigned to me as a tour guide. She is sexy, and looks like a cast member of Baywatch. I take a tour of the mansion and grounds. Finally, I am led through a series of underwater grottos. We pass another Playboy bunny straddling a man, squatting on his dick and riding him wildly and he lay flat on his back, receiving, helpless to her desire. They are both fully clothed except for his dick and her breasts and cunt. The bunny suit has another hole, it seems. They moan and scream with nasty, opulent pleasure, fucking away in that damp, gray grotto on the cold, stone ground, splayed out next to a shimmering swimming pool bathed in light from a skylight overhead. My bunny leads me nonchalantly past them, shooting me a coy glance as I stare. In the next grotto, a tall waterfall tumbles lustily into a lagoon. My bunny asks me if I’ve seen enough, if there’s anything more that I’ll be wanting from her. Am I interested in what I saw? Curious? She takes me behind the waterfall so that nobody can see. She is soaking wet. She puts my face onto her breast to suck. I suck her nipples. Then she sucks mine: you.

    I am masturbating and touching, pinching, twisting you as I write this.

V

REMOVAL

    My obsession with breast removal, breast sucking, and breastfeeding are all parallel, as in they do not touch.

I remember a sixth-grade classmate giving a speech about Amazon women and how they cut off their left breasts. I was eleven. I returned to this image for a long time. I later learned that it was to better shoot with a bow and arrow. What about the lefties?

    One time in eighth grade: I was rifling through a glossy magazine, and I saw a slender, modelesque woman with buzzed blonde hair and almost no makeup, wearing a singlet that clearly showed a flat chest. The caption read that she didn’t want her breasts anymore, so she removed them. I wonder where this person is now. Who is she? Is she trans? Was this article woefully gender incompetent, or did she still use she/her pronouns at the time of her surgery? Why did I fixate on this image for so long?

    For years after my experiences with my first boyfriend, I saw and felt dark energy in my right breast, the larger one. The one that needed less “encouragement.”

    My first energy healer told me that I needed to sort out my relationship with my breasts. She saw the dark energy too. She saw that I sometimes wanted them gone.

    My transmasc friends tell me that one can lose sensation in one’s nipples after top surgery. This prospect horrifies me.

Once, when I was 20, I cried about not being a man. I was in the arms of my gay male friend, in college, in bed. It was late. He kissed me. I cried some more. Then I got up and put on mascara. Or was the mascara another time?

    One of my greatest sexual appetites is for queer men who fuck other queer men. They don’t see the queer man in me.

    I met a beautiful 53-year-old transman last year. He was a radical faerie, and had transitioned seven years ago. He had always been butch, and was always attracted to queer and gay men. He had sex with men before his transition but “it never felt right.” Now it feels right. He told me that he underwent the physical transformation so that people would see him for who he was, so that he could have sex with the people to whom he was attracted. It wasn’t as much for himself, I don’t think.

    I highly identify with this story.

    Maybe when I am middle-aged, and done breastfeeding, I will transform into a queer man and have sex with the faeries for the rest of my life.

VI

HYBRID

    I have worked with the same energy healer for the past five years now. Her name is Eva. Many miracles, too many to name here, have occurred as a result of my work with her. One stands out: The dark energy is gone from my breasts now. I am very kind to them. I am still confused by them, sometimes, by their existence on my chest, but I accept their presence in my life as long as they are there. You will always be there, Nipples.

    Eva helped me recover my gender too. I am a hybrid.

    Like the car; like a mule; like an orchid.

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Chloé Rossetti is an artist, writer, performer, energy healer, and maternal pantheist based in Brooklyn, NY. Founder of Radical Nourishment, their work focuses on the intersection of ecology, collectivism, agency, ecofeminism, pleasure, sensuality, social integration, decolonization, and love. They implore anyone looking for companionship as they rewild their lifeway, especially in the urban environment, to get in touch with them.