⠀⠀⠀I’ve sort of moved home: a place where ‘Congradulations Class of 2020’ has been on the fire station’s interchangeable letter sign for about as long as the T R U M P flag’s flown from the pole; that’s only large enough to be census-designated because it’s filled with white people, which is also why the library’s just expanded.
⠀⠀⠀I say ‘sort of’ because my plants still live in my old life, but that’s their denial.
⠀⠀⠀Every time I go to Target to try to feel something, I also contemplate suicide by way of ramming my mother’s finally-paid-off 2008 Land Rover into one of the many empty Italian restaurants formerly-owned by families that point at themselves with their thumbs and make the joke ‘I-talian.’ Or if I should just tie a noose around both my neck and that of the 7-foot-tall metal rooster in my neighbor’s yard and call it a day.
⠀⠀⠀Otherwise, I’m Googling ‘can you buy weed pens online’ and finding ‘hailmaryjane’ is a real saint after watching Grease—fast-forwarding past anything that’s not a musical number—but before my stepfather walks in on me masturbating to a Harry Styles’ music video in the shower (‘Golden’ not ‘Watermelon Sugar’; I’m demisexual, and also definitely no longer straight); then at dinner we’ll all have an awkward conversation about how I’m practicing saying ‘pussy’ to strangers online because really, what else is there to talk about anymore?
⠀⠀⠀I mean, I think I still remember better.
⠀⠀⠀It has definitely been worse.
Rachel A.G. Gilman is the Creator/Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Creature, a columnist for No Contact Mag, and was Editor-in-Chief of Columbia Journal, Issue 58. She holds an MFA in Writing, Nonfiction from Columbia University and an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.