I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

by Marisa Crane

As I got older and gayer, I heard a lot of talk about chosen family, but I didn’t understand why something so beautiful had to be compared to family. Why couldn’t it just be its own good thing?

“This is how waves work: they build like a cry, then crash,”

If I had to choose, I would say the moment between when you decided to kiss me and when we actually kissed, that is where I wish to live forever. Inside my anticipation, dying to receive you.

Q: Can there be healing without forgiveness? A: This is an out-of-office reply. Check back later.

Had she been paying attention, she would have known it hadn’t happened overnight, that it took a million tiny stabs to bleed democracy dry.

Q: What do you want? A: I want to travel back in time and show that I can make decisions. Q: Aren’t you forgetting something? A: What? Q: That living is time travel, too.

“I’m no longer avoiding my own avoidance,”

“She has the influential skills of a dictator and the organizational skills of a wedding planner. A terrifying combination.”

I am powerful in my powerlessness.