I find it hard to find much info about Rose O'Neill's life and relationships. There are scattered suggestions of her being a lesbian (she's mentioned in "Remembering Sappho: transatlantic ‘Lesbian Nations’ in the long nineteenth century", her poem is in the anthology "Masquerade: Queer Poetry in America to the End of World War II" as evidenced by this review, her book "The Goblin Woman" has lesbian themes according to this description).

However, it's hard to find much info about her life, and especially the relationship with her sister, Callista. It is said in this article that they were living together around 1915 (Callista being her business manager, according to this interview), and that they were both active in a suffrage movement. They must've lived together for a long time, since in the interview above we have the following quote: "I did go and I was given her sister Callista's boudoir for my room, which was near Rose's room." about the house in Bonniebrook. The interviewed person is Rose Merritt, and according to the included scan of a letter she was there around 1937.

As for her poetry, poems dedicated to her sister read very erotic to me - and I find it really surprising that they would be printed without an enormous scandal in 1922. But I'm not historian - perhaps what reads to me as erotic, was just a typical expression of familial love. Or perhaps it was less of a scandal than I'd have assumed.

​

Death shall not ease me of you,

No, nor yet

That place where men go to forget:

That curious place

Where beds are made.

It shall not ease me of your face,

Nor I, in darkness laid,

Be ere untied

From the vine of your persisting side,

Nor flowers of your dissuadeless breast,

Nor rest

From wonder. Though I drew

The earthy cover all about

To succour me from you

I shall not keep you out.

Your might

Shall circumvent the night:

While you still press

Upon me obdurate loveliness:

And in your princely fashion

Rend my death

With absolute compassion.

I can not save you Love,

From me, relieve my Dove

Of hovering;

Nor loose your love-arrested wing,

Nor release in any wise

The hold of our tenacious eyes;

But your divine shall tremble me

And break my dead heart endlessly.

Death shall not ease me of you,

No, nor yet,

That place where men go to forget.

​

All the poems can be found online here, out of which 10 are dedicated to Kallista.

EDIT:
Just found this lovely quote here: "Indeed, O'Neill never had children, and although she married twice, she also divorced twice. Much of her adult life was spent living and working with her sister Callista at her homes in Greenwhich Village, Connecticut and in the Ozarks. Furthermore, her activism encompassed a wide array of ideas, from anarchism and free love to woman suffrage."