Throwing Yourself Away Always Sounds Like a Good Idea

Anne does not like the subway. It is not that it is crowded and noisy and dirty (although it is), because her politics do not allow her to dislike things on such fundamentally bourgeois grounds, and she would be affronted by the suggestion that the variety of people who ride the subway play any role in her aversion. She would never feel uneasy because of a group of black men standing near her, an immigrant loudly talking in an unknown language, or an unhoused person sitting with their entire life in a pile of dirty bags. Anne has done the work to unravel all of the forms of implicit bias that her upbringing taught her, and any suggestion otherwise is probably simple transphobia. ...

She was a girl of flawed and low character, suitable for little more than feedstock.

This story was originally posted to Twitter on June 6, 2022. Long-forgotten Fireflies finds her doll huddled outside, its display case’s well-polished glass shining in the little nook between two of the building’s many trash cans. She hums happily and kneels down beside it. “Hey, Lace. What are you doing out here?” It doesn’t meet her gaze. It’s garbage day, but they’re so far into the concrete forest that the truck won’t reach them until the evening; that vast thing rumbling past is just a bus, no matter its grasping arms or Lace’s hopeful gaze as it passes it by. ...