#41: Pain, old pal

Your monthly microfiction + snail-mail art

Welcome to the last day of the month, where I deliver our regular serving of bite-sized fiction and art!

Today we’ll…

💌 learn the voting results for this month’s prompt and next month’s historical topic,

💌 read some bite-sized fiction,

💌 write our own stories based on the prompts,

💌 peep the art I made my paid subscribers/patrons this month,

💌 and round up my creative news for May.

I’m nearly caught up with developing all my old rolls of film. Here’s a stray picture of me and my friend/fellow artist + weirdo Argun Tekant in Alameda, CA, 2023.

🗳 The votes are in

Patrons and subscribers voted for this month’s postcard-fiction prompt:

Action: putting on lotion

Word: flounce

Inspiration: Frida Kahlo’s letters to her mother

For ~immersive historical context~, read May’s snail mail deep dive:

🥞 The story - Pain, old pal

Here’s the postcard I wrote on:

Here’s the back:

Aaaaand here’s the transcription:

Frida’s back hurts. But then again, when does it not? The thing about pain, the thing people with easy backs and hips and wrists fail to realize is that, eventually, pain becomes an old pal, one who doesn’t care how tired you’ve grown tired of her. 

Today, Frida’s Pain flounces into the room and plops down at the kitchen table, leaning forward on her elbows and grinning. “Mind if I stay awhile, amiga?” 

As if Frida has a choice.

So yes Frida’s back hurts, but she’s making crepes all the same. The first one’s bubbling at the edges, which her Mamacita Linda always says means it’s ready. Right? Frida can’t recall. Either way, she wriggles the spatula under the crepe and flips it. One half has congealed to the cast iron while the other drools off her spatula, splattering across the skillet. She laughs. Six months ago, as she and Mama left their hometown movie theater, a man stumbled from the bar next door, doubled over, and vomited all over his shoes, right there for the whole world to see.

This crepe looks a lot like that. She shrugs it out of the pan and onto a plate, ignoring a stabbing that shoots up her spine as she hoists the skillet. 

Pain winks from the table. 

In the next room, Diego opens and shuts a dresser drawer. Frida smiles, pouring batter onto the skillet. At least he’ll think the crepes are funny – she thinks they’re funny. And who knows? Maybe this one will turn out. As the crepe bubbles along one edge, Frida rolls out her neck. In the corner of her eye, Pain opens the sugar jar in the center of the table and peeks inside. 

Beneath the skillet’s sizzle, Diego drops something – maybe the lid of a lotion – and it rolls across the wood floor. His breath hitches as he stoops to retrieve it from wherever it cartwheeled off to.

Bubbles ring the crepe, which surely must be perfect now. She flips it, tossing up a prayer alongside. Raw batter sticks to the spatula, save one charred moon that holds shape, grimacing at her from the pan. Looks like they’re having breakfast out today. Again. 

Diego emerges from the bedroom, rubbing a salve into his paint-cracked hands. 

Smiling, Frida lifts the skillet. The mangled crepe leers up at them. “Hungry?”

Diego throws his head back and roars, then Frida does too, until they’re both howling so hard she’s crying and her tears make the lights sparkle. Through the glint, laughing still, she clocks the kitchen table. For the moment, Pain is nowhere to be found.

Diego and Frida in the San Francisco studio where they stayed, 1930-1931. Their relationship was often volatile, but they very obviously loved each other a lot a lot.

📝 Write a story

I did it, and you can too :). Write a short story (500 words or less) using the prompts above, then share it with me! Reply to this email, post it in the comments, or turn it into an opera and invite me to opening night.

(As always, if you’re feeling stuck getting started, here’s an article I once wrote on microfiction fundamentals.)

🍻 Next month’s theme

Next month marks ONE YEAR of Snail Mail Sweethearts. Y’all! I’m over the moon. Thanks for everything. In honor of one year, I’ll be revisiting our inaugural historical mail theme - Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorene Hickok’s love letters.

On top of updating it with the latest research on the letters themselves, patrons and subscribers voted on what historical context we’ll explore. Y’all chose…

🍻 Prohibition Era - from its birth to its 1933 demise 🍻

Bust out your beers¹, folks!

💐 A month in postcard art

Every artist and their grandma has drawn Frida Kahlo and until this point, I’ve resisted the urge to capture the fashion icon in ink. But this month, at the age of 33 and after 20+ years of constant drawing, I have succumbed to the siren song that so many of my kindred have fallen prey to.

Translation: I drew some Frida frickin’ Kahlos and I LIKED it.

These are single-line drawings (meaning I never lifted up the pen!) with watercolor. I love the way single-line drawings force you to own your mistakes, making each Frida different from the last.

🌍 Updates in my creative world

• Last week I had an entire screenplay - beginning to end, full scenes and lines of dialogue - come to me in a dream. You bet your ass I’ve been hustling to make it real.

• I also got inspired to write a retelling of Oedipus (lol), so I’ve been picking apart my copy of the play in my spare time.

• Visually, I am working on an oil painting series of picture frames and bodies and clouds. It’s still in the beginning phases, but I dig where it’s going:

Well, I’ll leave you to it, friends! Thank you for inspiring me to write microfiction and draw mailable art every single month of my life. It is a fucking privilege and a half.

All my love and stamps until the sun explodes,

Nikita, your Snail Mail Sweetheart

1. Or your soda waters - I ain’t here to police ya!