We all know how she got here. Want. Desire. All the poor little mermaid’s ever wanted is legs, to split open like a lazy mollusk revealing its tender bits

I didn’t want to be a victim to my desire, to the legacies of white supremacy and internalized homophobia.

The way she smiled at him nearly made me jealous. Even though I didn’t know who she was, yet I was beginning to feel jealous.

Name, shame, secrete, wash, wipe clean, wring dry, sanitize. What I can’t expunge, I conceal. I blur and disguise.

The two men who approached us in Grand Central must have smelled it on us––the tension of coming apart.