Sophie Colette
Bio
She/her. Queer witchy tanguera writing about the loves of my life, old and new. Obsessed with functional analytic psychotherapy & art in service to revolution. Occasionally writing under the name Joanna Byrne.
Stories (23/0)
Coming Back Up
On a perfectly miserable February afternoon, I walked out of a Michigan psych ward, clutching my plastic bag of possessions in one hand and my mother’s arm with the other, and blinking like a baby animal in the snow-gray light. My retinas burned. It was a significant change from the sterile fluorescents that had been my only source of light for the past several days.
By Sophie Colette2 years ago in Psyche
- Runner-Up in From Across the Room Challenge
Sister Beast
Alex’s aunt, a motorcycle enthusiast and force of nature, presented me with the dogs just before we left. They were two of her favorites out of the existing pack of a dozen or so, and I was genuinely touched. “I want you to take Cleo and Honey with you,” she said, showing me where she’d packed their food, crates, and gear into a corner of the already-stuffed truckbed. “It gets lonely out there in those camps. Or not lonely enough, if some roughneck bachelor gets a whiff of you, gorgeous.” She hooted and smacked my ass, cackling at her own joke and at my reddening face. We started out for western Pennsylvania the next morning, the whole caravan: one F-250 pickup, one Harley Davidson, one cowboy biker, one girl far from home, Cleo the aging Yorkshire terrier, and a young red-nosed pitbull named Honey.
By Sophie Colette2 years ago in Fiction
The Year of Extraordinary Rest
When I started dating my partner, a gentle-giant Italian beefcake who likes to paint with watercolors and prepare increasingly elaborate pasta dishes, he was horrified by my relationship with sleep. This guy, I quickly came to understand, believes in luxury sleep. As a freelance graphic designer, he often works laborer jobs that require him to use all 6’3” and 250 lbs of himself. Add narcolepsy to the mix, and you’ve got a person who really, really needs his z’s.
By Sophie Colette2 years ago in Longevity
The Curse: A Love Story
Nobody calls their bank because they’re having a good day. This was the chief reason that I hated my job as much as I did. Eight hours each day, Monday through Friday, is a lot of time out of one’s life to be screamed at by irate clients who somehow had the idea that I possessed enough power to undo their late fees and bounced checks. And it was one of the reasons why, on the morning I first heard your voice, I was so startled by it.
By Sophie Colette3 years ago in Pride
I Dated My Professor
Shocked? Don’t be. If you’ve spent any time in undergrad, I promise you that you’ve known someone who’s had a somewhat inappropriate relationship with a teacher. I have to think this situation is more common than we’re led to believe. Professors are people, after all, with desires, secrets, trauma, shame, emotional baggage, etc. Just like your doctors, religious leaders, parents- and sometimes, these people behave badly.
By Sophie Colette3 years ago in Humans
I Dated My Professor
My vision went a little dark around the edges and I had to sit down abruptly. I heard Zach and Ivy talking but couldn’t make out their words. The image of Stefano standing outside elongated and twisted, until he was the same man from my memory- the man who I feared walking home from the library at night- tall, faceless, fast.
By Sophie Colette3 years ago in Humans
I Dated My Professor
I ran the mile-and-half to his house most nights, the air growing warmer as we slipped closer to summer, my feet crushing fallen cherry blossoms on the quiet dark road. I’d arrive at his door panting a little. He would already be there waiting, playfully scolding me for running alone at night, telling me I should let him come pick me up from campus, leading me inside to show me the candles he’d lit all around for a midnight picnic on the floor. He would kiss me deeply, always slow and delicious enough to make me even more breathless. He’d pull me down next to him and hand me a glass of wine, ask me if it was good. I never had any idea if it was good or not, so I’d put on a silly French accent and wiggle my eyebrows and say things like “old cream, owl feathers, rainbow essence on the nose” and he would burst into laughter and I would kiss him again, harder and inexpertly, and he’d smile and call me beautiful Joanna, and tangle his hands in my hair.
By Sophie Colette3 years ago in Humans