Neon Devotion
In the shimmering half-light of Echo Park, love becomes ritual, ritual becomes myth, and myth begins to eat through reality. When the woman at the center of it all reveals that her idea of healing means keeping everything she touches forever, devotion takes on its true shape: a beautifully painted cage.
Solarium Girl: A Devotion
A tanning bed in a Los Angeles salon becomes transfixed by the one girl who enters it like a secret and leaves part of herself behind each time. As its devotion deepens, it begins to imagine that keeping her safe and keeping her are the same thing.
Red Velvet / Holds Shape
After giving away the red velvet couch she shared with her ex, a woman finds that the breakup hasn’t left with it. As Los Angeles begins to pulse with haunted signals, queer longing, and objects soaked in old ache, she realizes some things don’t hold memories, they transmit them.
Writing The California Fever Dream
“Outside, the sky began changing colors like it was unsure which version of the sunset to run. A Joshua Tree caught fire, silently. Beautifully. And then reassembled itself in reverse.”
— Static at the edge of 29 Palms
“She could taste the day. Hot pennies. Sunscreen. The faint chemical sweetness of melted plastic… She told herself this was normal. California normal. A climate that didn’t ask permission.”
— What California Makes
“The heat was biblical and immediate. By the time she had crossed the wash and climbed the low rise beyond it, her shirt was sticking to her back and her thoughts had gone strangely bright around the edges.”