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by Sheyla Dorantes Sanchez
Images of Latinx femme couples walking down the street holding hands, both wearing dresses because the sun is shining and their legs are too nice to hide behind pants
How do I come out to my religious mother and homophobic father without breaking the relationship I've been building with them for years and might actually enjoy if I wasn’t constantly afraid they'd disown me if I came out to them
When does it stop being super religious for my aunts to refrain from marriage to serve God and does it start to be super queer and repressed instead?
Would my parents be happier if I stayed single for God than if I married a girl?
Will I find a love that will come home with me for birthday parties and holidays and will my family let her hold their children and push her into the cake? Will mami give her a to-go box to share food with her family and will she sing songs about damned women with my aunts? Will she put her arm around my shoulder and tell me that el amor de morenas nunca es fingido, ay?
Do queerness and traditional mexican families mix well or do I need to stick them in a molcajete and grind them into one another until you can’t tell the family apart from the chile verde apart from the queerness and make one delicious mess
Image of Frida Kahlo and Chavela Vargas laying in the grass, Frida’s flower-crowned head resting on Chavela’s stomach–a guitar by her side and an arm draped around Frida's chest
Has anyone ever written a story about Frida and Chavela being gay and in love? A short film? Flash fiction?
When Frida and Chavela were in love did Chavela sing to Frida as she braided her hair in the mornings or did she do it at night? Did she help her wash the paint out from beneath her fingernails?
What were their pet names? who was the amor and who was the cariño? No, these women were artists, they must have called each other something like “the light that turns my eyelids to orange sunsets” and “the stopping of my voice when something is just too beautiful for words” or maybe even “the smile of the moon on the first night we met when I knew your body would fit perfectly into mine” but even a simple “chavelita” would sound like poetry in the mouth of the woman you love
When will my life become mine? when I can finally talk about how god damned and gay I am, will I also be able to find a love that will fill me to my fingertips, if God is love itself, will I find someone who makes me a poet writing about the idle desire to hold the person you need–because that feels like more than love, and my love should make me more than a god
Images of the song I had stuck in my head and I couldn’t resist the joy of twirling her into the sunlight, so I pulled her into the hallway, into my arms that she sleepily sways in, she’ll kiss me on my collarbone and run away before I can start again–will the flowers I picked for her come between us as we eat the dinner that I cooked yesterday but that makes a good breakfast today? can I kiss her on the cheek? Will her eyes say ‘let’s do this for 200 years more’ and will my smile respond ‘why stop there when we can live for centuries?’
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