Volume I, no. 6, mid-August 2026

Last week, an acquaintance of mine posed a question: Why, when we think of spiritual experiences, do we so often think of them taking place in the “natural” world? For all the stories of burning bushes and dryads, where are the stories of divinity on the city bus, in places where other people can find us? Kate’s poem takes this naturalism in an unexpected direction, toward the precious small things rather than the massive. Her affection sprouts from wonder, mimesis, deep imagination. Carolyn’s story—just a snippet of her years spent in adolescent Catholic cloister—sees spirit in other people: in the nuns, in the other students, and most of all, in her firecracker teenage soul. The lesbian spirit, perhaps most spirited of all, animates this issue. Together, Kate and Carolyn are awestruck and awe-inspiring, both, no matter forest or high school, always tangled, always full of moral resolve.

xo,

Lillian

Two readers wrote in to respond to Alex’s story, “The Hand That Rings the Bell,” published in our early August 2026 issue.

Now, on to this edition of your favorite twice-a-month dyke literary magazine…

It looks like the stick I picked up on my walk; vines
deftly coiled around thin bark
Once upon a time those tendrils were pliable,
the branch young and green, both parts growing
in tandem with each other
each tenderly expanding in a curve,
concave and convex choreography
one kind of sacred geometry, aging,
firming up—an armature
    and a foundation
So which one holds the other together
is a most beautiful question
Connected, even when a single coil
or some papery bark sloughs off
    or fissures under the weight of snow
    or shudders from wind or time
I’m holding one answer in my hand
and I imagine us to be like this 

To share a neighborhood, a street, or even a salon with your high school principal is one thing, but to share your orthodontist is entirely another. There’s nothing quite like showing up for your routine appointment, desperately praying to be rid of the headgear that’s haunted your middle-and-early high school years, and seeing your principal exit the doctors’ office in her fresh rubber brace bands, her smile bound by rigid flecks of silver, grey, and green.

Speaking from experience, a few things may make this experience exponentially worse. One, your principal may be an extremely awkward woman; two, you may be in the throes of a typically self-conscious and cynical period of closeted adolescence, avoiding hellos and pleasantries with people when possible; three, you may be a frequent rabble rouser at your small Catholic school; and lastly, your principal may be a nun.

As far as nuns go, Sister C existed outside the usual bounds of holy sisters seen in film or television. She had no rosary in tow. She wore plainclothes and a cropped haircut, something between a bob and a pixie, which my younger self deemed particularly masculine. Unlike the coiffed feminine short cuts seen on teen stars in the early aughts, Sister C wore her short hair in a flat and subdued manner, absent of any styling that might have made the hairdo more acceptable to my self-hating, closeted, queer teenage self. She was tall and lanky and decidedly young, defying stereotypes of the older, matronly Mother superior. As I saw it, no words of wisdom could be gleaned from Sister C. We shared no “Climb every mountain, Maria” moment. She darted around town with a combination of sprightly verve and authority, while a questioning look in her eye often gave off a faint sense that, in fact, she may have not had any idea what she was doing.

At least that was my impression as a young woman in her stead. The bar of Mother superior is a hard one to meet, it’s true, especially in the face of teenage girls. Even Peggy Wood, who played the sister on-screen in The Sound of Music, was dubbed. As a teen, the incongruity of her character—youth and power, assurance and unease, high school principal and braces-wearer—could only be explained, to me, as a result of her ineptitude. At 16 or 17, when the fate of your headgear is a top concern, it’s hard to imagine what I now know: that we all end up peddling around in our thirties or forties, many of our demeanors defined by the questions we still have about the future.

I don’t think the realization that adults can be wayward too comes easy for honors students, especially those in the rigid confines of Catholic school. Pushed to excel, we were taught that every grade was a judgement of character or effort. A’s, extracurriculars, and godliness—along with a deft college essay—were the only way to seal one’s happily-ever-after, an expectation that sets one up for a cavalcade of rude awakenings later in life. At my all-girls high school, the high achievers were kept in a confined rotation of classes, preordained to socialize with fellow smarties. We were a small and likely insipid minority. Tops, there were twenty of us, all wound tight with our own anxieties and insecurities, comparing notes, class rankings, and final test scores over study periods. I fondly remember the cheerleading captain in our little cult frequently breaking down over…everything. In a group wound so tight, it felt comforting to be able to step in, provide a shoulder to cry on, and know, confidently and assuredly, “Well, at least I’m not as high-strung as her.”

In a group of such palpable neurosis, I was an unexpected rebel, often scoffing in the face of expectations, regulations, and other authorities. After a sequence of horrors in middle school—a year of accusations of lesbianism (turns out the bullies were right!), a diagnosis of scoliosis that led to a back brace, and the acquisition of aforementioned headgear (a holy trinity of awfulness)—perhaps I entered freshman year with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, which armed me with just the right amount of teenage nihilism to skirt the rules.

My first object of rebellion: my school uniform. Still reeling from those sixth grade accusations of sapphic predispositions, I worked hard to craft an appearance separate from the rigidity, and perhaps androgyny, of the uniform style. The ill-fitting polos, knee-length plaid skirts, and polyester V-neck sweaters all seemed to feed directly into the stereotypes about sapphic women that ran rampant during my childhood, and which continue today. The clothes were without style, without femininity, and utilitarian in ways that reminded me too much of those popular stereotypes (think tool belts, flannels, cargo shorts). Wearing the uniform as it was mandated disallowed me from emulating the types of high-femme characters I admired at the time and used both as muses and shields.

Looking to the French Yeye singers or Jean Luc Godard’s damsels in New Wave distress, outside of school, I crafted a seemingly carefree and feminine joie d’vivre. My extracurricular teenage wardrobe consisted of clothes that freely invited a certain type of male gaze, that of nerdy teen boys in bands, drunk old men at family functions, and wannabe punk dudes who lived in mansions and were tickled by my retro style. Online, I posted pictures where I posed like retro movie stars did, always putting a very specific notion of femininity on display. Achieved with ample use of the self-timer and lots of alone time, my poses were highly curated, cropped from a standard repertoire I’d seen embodied by starlets of the silver screen. There I was on the early internet, legs crossed, holding lipstick up to my young pursed mouth, looking away from the camera, trying my very best to look unaffected. In the glittering Y2K world of Juicy Couture sweatsuits and Von Dutch trucker hats, I made a point to be contrary. At every sweet sixteen or formal dance, I wore one of my grandmother’s vintage cocktail dresses, cropped at the knee. To my past delight and current shame, “You look just like Audrey Hepburn,” was a frequent response I received.

My sartorial efforts at creating an appearance that was easily legible as straight, feminine, and pretty extended from the mall and MySpace to the classroom. While I crafted a specific persona out of school, my uniform became a palette for contrarian chutzpa. I added my own unapproved elements of finesse to our green plaid skirts and monogrammed sweaters. While my classmates also skirted the rules—inviting uniform violations by rolling up the waistbands of their plaid skirts or wearing leggings or pajama pants instead of stockings or approved knee highs during winter—my adjustments were more fashion-forward.

Inspired by things that predated my birth and perhaps seeking freedom from any classification at all, I mixed trends with abandon. Approved polos? I’ll wear two and layer the contrasting collars like a protagonist in a John Hughes film. Our school sweater? Tossed to the side for a tweed blazer, which gave me the appearance of a boarding school student from another time or country. I threw caution to the wind when choosing footwear, pairing my uniform with patent leather Mary Janes or cowboy boots, depending on the weather and my mood. I never even bothered with uniform blouses.

My dress code violations were remarked on heavily but never punished. While my school was one of stereotypical Catholic school rules and regulations, discipline was often delivered with a fair share of hypocrisy. The misdeeds of my small honors cohort were frequently met with warm warnings or shoulder shrugs, but my friends who fell outside this elite group were reprimanded for every infraction and minor mistake. Students who were clearly falling behind because of real struggles or extenuating circumstances were inordinately punished, pushed to fail further and harder, framed as those who had to be “taught a lesson” about their behavior. One of my longest friends, a girl I’d known since kindergarten, fell into this camp. A lovable troublemaker with a penchant for talking back and missing class, by the last week of senior year, she still had nearly two-hundred hours of detention, a sentence no one could serve. Throughout the same four years, one of my very best friends and a fellow honors student, missed almost every assignment deadline and frequently negotiated her grades with teachers semester by semester. It wasn’t until our senior year that she, too, found herself with some hours of detention. Due to preferential treatment or prejudice, the hammer of retribution didn’t come down evenly. Wielded by a group of women with their own tastes, favorites, and beliefs, it hit some students harder than others. Once, met with my out-of-uniform shoe choice, a beloved English teacher simply warned me that I was ruining my feet by not having arch support in my bowed ballet flats. I still think of her every time a foot problem arises.

Despite my slowly flattening feet, my amendments to the uniform garnered great praise from fellow students. On a school-sponsored trip to Italy during Easter, everyone’s favorite weeping cheerleading captain took a candid picture of me, in which I sat on a fountain in Florence. When she showed me, she remarked, “Look at you! I’ll never be as cool as you.” To this day, when I reflect on my teenage self’s shrewd work at crafting an effortless female visage for both boys and bullies, I think of this photo. My legs are crossed, one flat hanging lazily from my right leg, an aqua-patterned scarf draped around my neck to match my blue knee-length skirt. I’m wearing a black cardigan and big black sunglasses to match. I look carefree and elegant, but I know my poses were curated, my looks orchestrated for appeal. In my younger self, I recognize a lack of awareness that a world can exist beyond the gaze of men. The image is fed by the same beauty standards as my self-timed photos, its graceful posture hiding the denial that characterized these early navigations of identity and sexuality. I wouldn’t completely detangle these threads in myself until many years later, when I’d realize “lesbo” could feel more like a badge of honor than a shameful stain.

If my curated looks were a shield, a performance that brought me some acceptance, they did nothing to protect me from the psychological theater of the Catholic school classroom. Some teachers’ putrid sanctimony was ripe from day one of my freshman year and then continued to rot from there, stinking progressively more, like sour fruit in the summer. As a freshman, there were moments when something started to smell off. For my Irish Catholic family, religious schooling wasn’t necessarily tied to personal belief or devout spirituality, but rather a norm. It was just what we did, and sharing stories of the Priests and Sisters we encountered (or survived) was a perk of our parochial education. I shared stories with my mother, who also went to Catholic school, and she likened early tales of my school’s cast of characters to those of the strict nuns she’d encountered in the ’60s and ’70s. But even for my mom, there were some stories where the stench of zealotry and hatred at my school became too strong to ignore.

A memorable one goes like this: On my first day of high school, as students siphoned into class, my religion teacher went berserk anytime anyone tried to sit in the first row. She screamed, “Oh no, that’s where Linda is sitting!” Or, “No! Don’t sit on Rebecca,” pointing at empty chairs. Once class began, she called on these phantom students and responded to nothing, “That’s a great point, Rebecca,” or “What a keen observation on that Bible passage, Linda.” She then took the final moments of class to share that, no, she wasn’t crazy. She knew no one had been sitting in that row but wanted us all to recognize that the row of empty chairs represented the unborn girls that were murdered during the sin of abortion. They were classmates we would never get to meet.

My fellow freshmen and I, young teenage strangers, looked at each other, bemused, confused, a bit terrified. She finished her explanation with the following statement that I will never forget for its pure idiocy: “That is why this election cycle, you have to vote for President Bush.” It was 2004. We were all fourteen. From day one, my teenage nihilism began to calcify, and a disgust with the women in charge started to form.

Over time, a hardening affinity with liberal politics and a strengthening sense of justice gave me a deep distrust of the school’s proscriptions. My small acts of rebellion became more frequent and less stylistic: publishing a front-page article in the school paper on the new HPV vaccine, writing about Nancy Pelosi’s appointment to Speaker of the House with a decidedly feminist delivery, advocating for a Day of Silence on Worlds AIDS Day. The response to these actions was mostly negative, which I attributed to what I saw as the school’s preference toward Christian rhetoric, not Christian values. Characteristic of the uneven way discipline was given, responses varied teacher by teacher, administrator by administrator. A liberal-leaning faculty advisor for our small Amnesty International chapter solemnly told me the school’s archdiocese wouldn’t approve a Day of Silence for AIDS “because of their stance on the LGBTQ community” but suggested we host a Day of Silence for all suffering people. How inclusive.

Other teachers’ responses weren’t so subtle. One confronted me during a lunch period, by stomping angrily toward our table and asking, “How dare you write so positively about someone who kills babies?” At 16 or 17, I was thrown by the interaction, but now I wonder if this confrontation was sparked by a conflict I knew nothing about. Had she already complained to the adults in charge about the article on Nancy Pelosi and then decided to take things into her own hands, chastising me for “supporting a woman like that”? Perhaps even among the schools’ grown-ups there were rifts akin to teenage cliques. Any compromises were falsely presented as options, all under the guise of “The archdiocese said so.”

What in God’s holy name is “the archdiocese”? I confess that, up until this writing, the structure of archdiocesan rule wasn’t entirely clear to me. I think it says a great deal about a Catholic upbringing that I never really asked what an archdiocese actually did. In the Catholic Church, apparently, the answer is: quite a lot. Looking at the Archdiocese of New York’s website, I’ve learned there are over 2.5 million Catholics, 300 parishes, and 156 Catholic schools within its purview. It is essentially an establishment created to manage statewide budgets, school mandates, and other contemporary bureaucratic needs, within the Catholic superstructure of a municipality. Wikipedia defines an archdiocese as an “ecclesiastical province” and makes note that the term “archdiocese” is absent from any Catholic canon, which I find particularly interesting. It is essentially an establishment of modern making created to manage statewide budgets, school mandates, and other bureaucratic needs. An archdiocese is headed by a single archbishop and, among other more direct responsibilities, runs local parishes, operates regional Catholic schools, and manages charities in a given region. Depending on the size, an archdiocese can have a supporting leadership team of between two and a hundred individuals, usually bishops and vicars—roles exclusively for men.

Looming over my high school like the mythic and illusory spirit of the Great and Powerful Oz, the “Archdiocese of New York” was both a scrim—obscuring any real sense of who held the power within the hierarchy of our Catholic education—and a scapegoat. If something was radical, unsavory, untoward, it wasn’t the kind and benevolent sisters who chided the girls. Surely, they felt otherwise, had more compassion and understanding. But “the archdiocese” had other opinions and, most importantly, the final say.

A great many actions far crueler than uniform mandates took place under the guise of Archdiocesan opinion and authority. Openly queer students were ridiculed by faculty. Entire chapters on STIs, STDs, drug use, and pregnancy were removed from our health textbooks. When I was a junior, a soft-spoken freshman who’d placed into my upper-level Spanish class disappeared from daily roll call one day. She had been a frequent group project partner, and I missed her quiet confidence. I later learned she’d gotten pregnant and was kicked out of school due to Archdiocesan disapproval. The archdiocese was the architect of those empty chairs, while it ignored the actual, breathing girls in the other rows.

Even today, reminders of these cruelties crop up here and there. Just recently, in an alumni Facebook page I joined on a whim, a graduate I never knew posted a link to a Change.org petition with an urgent plea for the reinstatement of her son’s teacher: a “beloved teacher,” “amazing educator,” and “devoted Catholic,” who was fired by the archdiocese for being gay. Likes and comments of support flooded the post, all confirming they’d signed the petition and were praying for the teacher and his students. Akin to my own experiences as a student, the exchange reeked of false virtue, hypocrisy bleeding through the text of every supportive comment. If this gay teacher wasn’t so outwardly devoted, would he have been as supported? What about all the other teachers and individuals subjected to similar homophobic actions at the behest of the church? Hasn’t preferential treatment always been reserved for those deemed likable or good and, therefore, worthy? How Christ-like. On the Facebook page, the admin chimed in, confirming she’d signed in support. Of the teacher’s dismissal, she wrote: “What an absolute sin.”

As a high school student I often wondered if real rules undergirded the decisions passed down to us from this anonymous body on high, since so many of the rules seemed counter to compassion or common sense. But now I wonder if the fates of students, teachers, and parishioners are and always have been determined by the ecclesiastical whims of those in charge at a given moment? At the time of this writing, Timothy Dolan is the Archbishop of the State of New York. A short Google Search will yield a few lines of sight into this particular man’s whims. Following the George Floyd protests in June of 2020, he compared cops to priests. In 2009, he signed an ecumenical document advocating for Christian civil disobedience in the face of gay marriage and abortions (think Kim Davis). As Archbishop of Milwaukee in 2007, he sought to move millions of dollars into a separate trust to shield assets from “victims of clergy sexual abuse who were demanding compensation,” according to the New York Times. To think that this one man, steeped in personal dogma and bias, rife with flaws like any other human, presides over a jurisdiction of millions of believers and determines how they worship. I imagine him and his all-male supporting staff sitting in a quiet cloaked room, holding scissors and string like the Fates, making indiscriminate snips, sending whole chunks of people’s lives, educations, and futures to the floor.

It’s worth noting that “those in charge” are almost never really the nuns. Even in a small parochial high school run exclusively by women, the force of patriarchal power ran rampant. Time and time again, young women’s wellbeing was put on the back burner in the interest of appearances and Archdiocesan approval. Looking back, I realize that this senseless and endemic hypocrisy was another symptom of patriarchy. Yes, the mixed messages and biased punishments were a failure of leadership—under Sister C’s authority, there seemed no unifying principles, no guiding consensus. But now I also realize this lack of authority was never entirely Sister C’s fault. Under the patriarchal system in which a group of distant men always had the final say, she was never really empowered to have any true authority at all.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in an exchange we shared around the article I wrote on the new-at-the-time HPV vaccine. After school pushback against the piece, I was given the chance to meet one-on-one with Sister C and state my case. I was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, and I couldn’t rationalize why any woman, God-fearing or otherwise, would want to shield important medical information from a group of young women in her stead. She explained to me, calmly and plaintively, in her manner of awkward condescension, that no mention of sex or allusion to premarital sex could take place in the school newspaper. The vaccine, I reiterated, had virtually nothing to do with sex outright and was, if nothing else, an advancement in women’s preventative care.

“But it has to do with an STD so we cannot publish that,” she said. “We cannot write on anything having to do with sex, so the article can only say that the vaccine is available and prevents cancer. We cannot mention what kind.”

I was blindsided. Surely this woman was not going to obscure these important facts from the article? We couldn’t say what kind of cancer? Overcome with rage and disbelief, my retort was simple and direct: “Half my classmates might already be having sex, and taking these important details out is keeping information from your students that could protect them in the future.”

Sweaty and incensed, I was dismissed.

The article ran. No mention of sex, cervixes, or STDs was present. I now wonder what she did or thought immediately after I closed her office door. Anger? Frustration? Perhaps pride in my unabashed retort? To what extent did she even believe the words she was saying? Did she, somewhere in the recesses of her rational brain, actually agree with me? At the time, I thought her an idiot. Looking back, I see a woman parroting a talking point, feckless against what she saw as the absolute authority. What woman—nay, person—hasn’t toed a company line and withheld better judgement so as not to rock a boat? After all, what were my patent leather flats and bows and cocktail dresses other than my own way of toeing a line, keeping up appearances, maintaining my value and appeal by subduing the queer bits of myself?

For Sister C, the stakes were much higher. Her boss—the Catholic Church, the diocese—was in effect responsible for her whole life, her salary, her living quarters, her friendships, even the braces on her teeth. I question if Sister C ever realized that all that, at the expense of her autonomy, was actually worthless.

Looking back, it’s almost unfathomable that I spent a whole ten days traveling Europe with the very same woman I believed an idiot. Still, the option to travel and explore was too good to pass up, even if it meant I had to spend every waking moment with Sister C, observing her off-putting demeanor in the real world, exchanging uncomfortable pleasantries with the woman who I saw as a traitor to her sex. Outside the confines of the school campus, her aura softened, her mood shifted slightly. On tour buses and plane rides, she traded stiff button-downs and chinos for polos and Bermuda shorts. Her cropped hair sat slightly more askew than it had back at school, single strands moving across her face with new freedom in the Italian breeze. On day trips to Sienna and Assisi, she seemed almost giddy, skipping from religious site to religious site, sharing facts about saints and stories with her wards. On long bus rides between Rome and Florence, Padua and Venice, she and the dean of students shared cackles and belly laughs, expulsions of joy and lightness I hadn’t seen from either one before.

One night, outside Venice, toward the very end of the trip, they decided us girls had behaved and were entitled to a night on our own. The only condition was to be back at the hotel by nine. The freedom was overwhelming. Immediately, a few of my fellow honors students, normally so wound-up and anxious, started scheming. We had three hours. What couldn’t we do in three hours? A few groups set off for fancy dinners or quiet nights at the hotel. We blazed a trail, the four of us on one mission: to get positively plastered. Or ubriaco in Italian, which our anxiety-ridden cheerleader friend spoke well enough.

We assumed we were of age in Italy but were heartbroken to learn that the drinking age was 18. Flitting about, from one tiny osteria to the next, we were routinely denied service. Finally, in a fit of bravery, our cheerleader marched confidently into a modest pizzeria, her eyes firmly glued to a beer case. After a few moments, she beckoned us to join her, as a waiter prepared several small paper cups of something. Limoncello, she explained. And chocolate liqueur. We each sipped our fill and danced out onto the cobblestones, our mission accomplished.

On the way back to the hotel, we beamed with the success of our misdeeds, in a nascent moment of teenage abandon. Our previously anxious cheerleader stopped mid-walk, her anxiety melting away and replacing itself with a gutsy glint. She opened her purse to display four Heinekens that she’d bought at the pizzeria without us knowing. We shrieked in disbelief, skipping and stomping in circles. It was decided that, since we all stood to benefit, we’d share the risk and each smuggle one beer past the hotel check-in. Ever the honors students, we brokered the situation calmly and logically, as if in Model UN. If the archdiocese could see us now!

A few blocks from the hotel, we readied ourselves, sticking bottles in coat pockets and down pants. I had cruel visions of Sister C conducting pat downs, the dean of students taking notes on a big legal pad, speed dialing each of our parents to share the news of our expulsions. As we approached the hotel, my heart started to race. My mind quickly caught up with my heart: This would be way worse than a uniform infraction, worse than any of my heretofore “rebellious” acts. No amount of goodwill or respect, which I believed I’d garnered as a passionate but persistent student, would save me from this one.

Then, I saw Sister C. She was laughing with the dean, her wide-open mouth releasing guttural noises beyond her braced smile. They were joking about something and seemed positively pleased with one another. Sister C’s eyes glimmered. At one point, the dean bent down and began loudly slapping her knee. They looked like young girls, faces bright and smiling, not a care in the world, free in that way women are in shared company.

As we got closer to their laughter, I suddenly realized: They were drunk! Definitely drunker than we were. As I approached Sister C, my Heineken smuggled in tow, I became aware that they didn’t really care what we had been up to this night. This was their moment of respite from a week of overseeing students. Together, drunk and laughing, the women were free. Free from archdiocesan pressures, free from the daily cruelties carried down peg by patriarchal peg, free from the knowledge that—despite their accomplishments or achievements, their lives of service, commitment, and good works—they’d always be dead last in the hierarchy of a broken 2,000-year-old system.

In their shared laughter, I saw Sister C as a young girl and wondered what she must have been like when she was our age, before entering the convent, before becoming a principal, before having to hold meetings on pregnant teens or uniform violations or newspaper articles of which the archdiocese wouldn’t approve. Back then, would she have joined us in our moment of rebellious reverie, skipping along cobblestones with beers shoved in pockets and pants? Upon seeing us, she stifled her laughter, but the smile didn’t cease.

“Did you girls have fun?” she asked us.

We nodded, but not too enthusiastically. “We got pizza,” one volunteered, not me.

“Delicious,” she responded, another chuckle accompanying the wave of her hand.

Having passed check-in, the four of us gleefully headed upstairs to our rooms. We pried the beers open with the base of each other’s bottles, shared great guttural laughs and squeals much later than lights out. Our young faces remained bright and smiling, unaware of the shape of the new worlds coming to greet us outside the quiet confines of Catholic school, free for what was perhaps the first time but certainly would not be the last.

Kate Okeson (she/they) is a student of wonder. Find Kate at kateokeson.substack.com

Carolyn Keogh (she/her) is a writer, art historian, and educator who lives in Hudson, NY, with her wife and her dog. Find Carolyn at www.carolynkeogh.com