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To queer women everywhere who ended up in relationships with men as ongoing proof that who we love is not a choice.
I stared down the barrel of the lesser of two evils: the flesh-and-blood disappointment of a human man, or a life trapped in my imagination with a fictional lover.
I blocked his number but didn’t bother to hide my social media from him. Allowing old dates to see how much better I was doing without them was a favorite pastime of mine, and I would hate to rob him of that opportunity.
I let the coffee steep in its French press while I did the laziest form of my morning routine: skin care, messy bun, and a slouchy T-shirt. Having my own place meant no one could force me into the tyranny of pants.
People like to comfort themselves by believing the scary things are out in the world. It keeps them from living. It’s often the danger out your front door that blinds you.”
What a sensation to know someone well enough to hear the cadence of their silence.
The Macdonald Triad was what all the true-crime podcasts I listened to while cleaning my house or wasting time on a plane had called it. The triad was composed of three ingredients: cruelty to animals, bed-wetting, and arson.
“You can’t study something while looking down your nose at it.”
In fact, I suspect it’s why you’ve lived by your many aliases. Because at the end of the day, it isn’t just for safety or anonymity. It’s because some part of you knows that names have power.”
The realm words weren’t just old or lost or strange. They were too powerful, too important to be shared. Instead, we were left with the outer edges, as she’d called them. Whatever we did to communicate those thoughts would suffice.
“Have you heard that sunflowers turn to face each other when there’s no sun in the sky?” She didn’t wait for my response, allowing me to crumble into myself as if I were a black hole. “It’s not true,” she said quietly. “It’s something cute, something made up, something people tell themselves about flowers to feel nice…but Marlow, right now there’s no sun. And everything about your life has felt like make-believe up until the moment it’s come true. So what if it’s a myth that sunflowers look to each other when there’s no sun in the sky? When has something being a myth ever stopped it from being
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“Let’s be sunflowers.”
