Tonight I mourn my dead.

Summer was not murdered in the conventional sense of the word. Not in the way most think of "murder." Her stomach hurt when we started talking--that's all.

She was working at a grocery store in Florida. We started talking through a union effort. When I hatched an idea for a zine press, she was right there on top of it, sending me art & ideas & philosophizing. She was significantly younger than me but through her eyes I started to see myself, the way I had briefly related to my own body around her age, the way I shoved certain thoughts back down again & tried to carry on with the gender that had been prescribed to me. She joined in some of my online TTRPG games & always lit up the scene.

Eventually she quit that shitty grocery store job & the crummy folks she was hanging around with, fell in love with a glorious drag jester, & sprang from Florida entirely. Bound for Minneapolis, Summer was a fighter of the gentlest sort. She & her partner endured bad housing contracts, U-haul issues, & wrong turns to eventually land in a better state. She fell short of Minneapolis but managed to get healthcare for the first time in her life & promptly started HRT...

... & then treatment for pancreatic cancer.

But it was way too late. Pancreatic cancer is awful, & surgery is an option early on, but it was Stage 4 by then & "treatment" almost immediately became "hospice."

I still expect her to message me sometimes, this dear friend I came so close to meeting. To show me her art. To share some sharp observation. But she's gone. She's gone because this country prices life so cheaply, & trans lives even less.

So yeah, I'm scared of transphobe violence, but the folks who want us dead command our deaths from hospitals & offices too. I tell you, economics is a slow murder, & I know Summer would agree.

The violence against us today isn't just a chance to defend ourselves; it's a chance to prove a better world is possible.

#TDoR