Honestly? Same.

But I also forget to text back with my phone on DND from. All the app notifications.

Every trans person that dies to violence, due to hatred and projection and paranoia and fear, deserves to still be here.

I don't have all the answers and probably never will.

But today, as any day, it's time to face ourselves and recognize each other as human. Humans that deserve life.

The trouble with days like today is that it compartmentalizes "appropriate" space for mourning.

When mourning is cyclical and ebbs and flows on its own cadence.

And the society I live in doesn't have a framework for what to do with mourning, with rage, with sadness. Punishes it more than not.

I am white, and I have a lot going for me as a trans man. It shouldn't change that my more vulnerable siblings should still be here. Every. Single. One.

It shouldn't change that I still grieve you when you're gone.

It shouldn't change that your life should be a full and fulfilled one.

Kai Cheng Thom is absolutely correct, that these rituals are meant to soothe the griever, and does nothing to change the tides that pull our loved ones under.

Every life lost had purpose and meaning, and every year that life remembered briefly by name, and forgotten by the next growing tidal wave.

The last year I remember holding space, I laid out my trans flag and lit a tea light for every name I had handwritten down that year.

I filled the entire flag.

It was a fire hazard on top of carpet.

And I am deathly afraid of being engulfed in flames.

But this is where we're at.

Closest I know is in Olympia but @charlenemaximum.bsky.social