and it hit me. none of them talked of people they know dying. none of them expected anyone they know to die. they made jokes even, about how “eventually” at someones funeral they would say such and such or do such and such.

today alone two people i know were in danger or had disappeared suddenly. during the evening i only knew one of them was ok, it is only now that i sat down on the train and checked my phone that i saw the other was as well.

this is not counting the countless times i worried about my other friends today, worried that they were hurt or spiralling or in danger. sure, my anxiety makes it worse, but the worry would always be there.

this is also not counting how many times i thought of my own death today… as recently as the day before yesterday i even entertained the thought of killing myself on this day. death surrounds me, inevitable and cruel and undeserved. people i love more than anything who could so quickly vanish under the pain and cruelty and isolation of being a tranny.

to be trans is to be dead. to be excluded from the known and comfortable rails of living. to be something unthinkable and hateable,

and ignorable.

on the way back through the station, we passed a massive ad for the new harry potter series. i noticed that some vandal had stuck a tiny trans flag sticker right over harry’s forehead. “trans rights are human rights” it read.

as we sat down in the train. the friend i was with, who had earlier that evening spoken positively same sex marriage and how cruel and offputting homophobia was, asked me, “have you seen the new harry potter trailer? it looks so good…”

thus lives the tranny, in death and erasure, a tiny illicit stamp on the civilisation wide landscape of cissiety. and thus live i, repressed and unfixable, and grieving all my loves long before they wither.