I moan into empty ears, in streets of rain and fever.

Turning, my dress floats. Watch me be free; watch me forget my gender. It’s truly from one moment to the next, and just my hands finding pills in my pocket is everything I need to feel safe again. Shutters clicking, flashes flashing — now life has been paused. Great, I will live forever, even though everyone tells me life is short. My friend faced the emptiness of a vacuum-filled galaxy at the very moment I passed out next to him. A nun told me that the whole secret is no secret, and that’s why I started writing. Some people think the soul leaves the body when you die; I think there has never been anything that could leave anything else.

But what should I say? It’s late at night, and I’m hugging my plush toy. The air conditioner paints my lungs dry, and tomorrow my grandma will visit me. She tells me to never do drugs but to take the Oxys for the pain. Yeah, grandmas, huh.

Safe and sound, under blankets and on oxygen. Like climbing a mountain for the first time, there is nothing but oxygen and the stars above you. That’s where I moan into empty ears; that’s where I walk through streets of rain and fever; that’s where I will swallow another Oxy. And that’s where society forces me to forget my gender.