...the syntax of sweetness

betrayal grief, the inverse of each word, post full moon in scorpio

I had a nightmare. I was giving a workshop called the “art of the tease” for a boardroom of C-Level executives. Can you even imagine? You’ll know I’ve been bodysnatched when….

I feel like a nocturnal creature. Trawling the dark spaces for something to eat. I came back from almost a month-long tour in the U.S. and went back to working nights. What evolutionary adaptations have slowly taken hold after tens of thousands of hours in nighttime spaces? At times these days I’m an exhausted anglerfish, myopically moving through the depths, tempering my own vices with Habits that include daily probiotics, a biweekly cigarette, an unfinished thesis, a nebulous situationship. Hello 33.

At the start of the month, I celebrated my birthday (which I am honored to share with Beltane and the workers of the world!) surrounded by friends, play, mustaches, and whimsy. I truly don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve such vibrancy in this one. I constantly look around and feel awe at the strength, beauty, and brilliance of my friends and collaborators.

I feel the blossom and the sting.

Full flower moon in Scorpio. I am still reeling from what the moon stirred… the sediment kicked up from murky depths.

Betrayal has been an up theme lately. The air is crackling with it. Do you feel it too? Every betrayal is a gift because it reveals truth and shakes us awake from our delusions, spotlights our unspoken expectations. Truth is what I’m after — as in the malleable tides of what can be true, what is possibly true. The heart speaks in absolutes, the intellect can be much more agile. Can the heart hold opposing truths?

Every word has a shadow.

Every declaration an inverse.

Words are spells and sometimes conjure their opposite.

I love how the word betrayal conjures both a revelation and a giving up… a surrender. Who have you betrayed or double-crossed? When has it been yourself? These dark waters.

The sensation of betrayal is like the scorpion’s sting. A hot nerve. And it’s also sweet. It is alive and blossoming.

Thankfully, I don't feel betrayed by my own body lately. I feel that we are on the same team, working together. I am grateful to be aging, to be settling in for, I hope, a while.

I found my first grey hair on the way back from the U.S. I was staying in a hotel in San Francisco and felt giddy. Like peeling away in a getaway car. Like look, we made it!! I am not trapped in a career I hate or a spirit-diminishing relationship. I feel like I made it to the top of a mountain. Swerved the lies that came my way about what to tie my worth to.

a sweet sentence/ tale of two puddings

As it turns out, one of my favorite sentences I ever wrote I didn't write at all, but inherited and unknowingly reproduced it with almost identical syntax nearly 20 years later.

I was so proud of myself, comparing a cinnamon stick to a wishbone. When I wrote it, I felt satisfied with myself. I had found the perfect comparison. Achei…. achar, means to find or to think. I suppose, in a way, I had found it somehow. It lived, dormant, in the recesses of my memory. It lived like a sleeper agent, reified in the pages of the Keene Sentinel.

In 2020, I was on a walk during the pandemic when the first sentence of a new project came to me— was it not my great-grandmother's cheeks that turned bell pepper red when the firemen came and she spoke no English? And thus began a years-long, unwieldy and slowly developing prose project on time, shame, and four generations that has since shape shifted into fiction.

This is more than a sense memory, it’s a syntax. About sweetness and two different puddings. My great-grandmother made rice pudding and provided the doce– the playfulness and decadence I associate with her. Whereas rice pudding was a treat, with its lush milky sweetness, tart from the lemon rind, and canela em pó sprinkled on top, mingau de milho is sustenance— the skin of its surface growing taught like skin as it cooled in the air. A breakfast prepared before anyone was awake. Cornmeal and grit, this one is iconically Mima in its practicality. In its dailiness.

I wrote the following sentence about mingau de milho in my essay:

She’d always tuck away in one of the bowls a small cinnamon stick from the pot; finding it was like getting a wishbone, filled with good luck.

Recently, in 2025, I asked my mom for the rice pudding recipe. She sent me the writing that had accompanied the recipes for both the rice pudding and the mingau de milho. I had to read this sentence twice.

She always tucked away in one of the bowls a small cinnamon stick; finding it was like getting a wishbone, filled with good luck.

I thought, how is this possible?? An original sentence I had felt so proud of was not an original at all! Nearly identical syntax with only the slightest differences.

I sent her back the part where it appeared in my own essay, joking that I had unintentionally plagiarized her. Her response was generous:

Omg! This is so wild! I wrote this in 2005! We are forever connected through time and space!

Beijos querida!

Some of the parts of myself that I love the most come from her.

Creative Updates:

• One more week to submit your abstracts, poems, collaborations to this marvelous issue of Diffractions I am co-editing. Check out the full call here.

• Working Girls Press has some hot new merch!! Crop tops and totes in addition to our beautiful books. You can also now bundle books with merch at a special price point. Support sex-worker led publishing and treat yourself/ a sweetie in your life.

A song for the weekend:

“I dream of fire/ Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire.”

May our improbable roses bloom, may our horses never tire.

~

Thank you, as always, for spending a slice of your precious time here with me. This missive will always be free! If you would like to support me further—my novella writing and my publishing work, you can subscribe to the paid tier or send me a tip at Venmo @duffylala or PayPal duffylala [at] gmail <3