The Splintering Moon: A Eulogy for Trans Women Who Die Young

Writing

Jun 16

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Waylon, I must have been the last one to hear. Guess that's what I get for living under a fucking rock. I'm so sorry I didn't get to say goodbye. Or goddess-speed. And sorrier at how much space there was between us even as we moved in and out of one another’s lives.

Every time a trans woman I admire dies, it is like another piece of the moon has splintered off to drift away into nothing. The moon in my heart gets smaller every year. One day it will be small enough to carry in my pocket. And then there will be nothing left to reflect the light of the sun any longer. Nothing left to wash away my fury. I will take it straight to the goddess then. I will scream for each of you as I skip it across the glassy pool of her face.

It breaks my heart how frail we are. How frail you had to be, Waylon. That it had to be you first. The way that all those unborn memories were stripped away from you and your lover in an instant. The way that none of us see it until it is upon us. All this love. All these stories. These people. Everything in our hearts and minds--our very dreams. They seem so big when we are still here. Bigger than anything in the whole wide world.

Time cracks like a whip.

And we remember what frailty means.

What we are.

What becomes of creatures like us.

Well, I will carry your memory with me Waylon. As best I can.

I will cherish the conversations we were blessed to have.

Cry for those you loved and who loved you deeply and completely.

I invite your still heart to beat in mine.

And if you are still hanging around somehow, come dance with me for as long as you need.

I will leave the lights on for you.

~~~

Like many trans sisters, we were always just at the periphery of one another’s lives. Ever orbiting. Sometimes intersecting. You and I were parallel lines a few too many hairs apart. Queers tend to spill in and out of one another’s lives in this way. We live all over one another in a way that they do not. We understand family in a way that they cannot.

And you were my trans sister. t4t means something cis folks cannot understand.

Simply knowing that you existed alongside me made my own journey easier. Seeing you around. Sharing knowing grins. Occasionally chatting about our experiences with art, HRT, and sex. Your existence gave my heart just a bit more peace. What a rare thing that has become.

I regret never telling you how much it meant that you messaged me of all people when you first had questions about hrt and transitioning. Or how graceful you seemed to me, for someone so new. How unafraid. I had been so terrified in those shoes. The thought that someone as fearless as you could want to learn something from me was mesmerizing. Back then, there was so much hope in that.

Our transness is so fucking isolating in a way that few understand. It is frigid lonely at times. I feel it still. It comes and goes in the night. I know you felt it too from the conversations we had.

There is something I know now--emphatically--that I struggled with understanding back then. To think of all the parallel agonies and beautiful things we experienced alongside one another…I cannot help but feel that we were not alone at all. Not when the horror of dysphoria found us. Neither when we felt the bliss that came with our changing bodies. That dizzy freedom that only trans folks and maybe skydivers can ever know, however rarely we might be seized by it. The wild frenzy in our hearts.

How

infinite

have

been.

There is so much comfort in this congruence.

In the knowledge that whatever sick thing might happen to us, there are still others just like us with their own stories who have also felt this same cold. Who are just as afraid, but never bothered enough to be pushed back into hiding.

This is what you were to me. Then and now.

Rare, beautiful congruence.

A sister.

A knowing smile in a world of eyes made sick by contact.

We walked miles apart, still parallel--arm in arm like phantoms, we walked through this world so full of monsters with the sun spilling wild through our chests and our palms.

We laughed at their swords. Drank the sky until we grew sick with memory.

And however much we feared, we loved that much plus one. We held. the fuck. on. And in doing so, reminded one another that monsters also die. Storms pass. Love finds us again. And again. And again. As many times as it will.

So long as we fight for it.

This is the case for all our sisters. There are so few of us. If you are reading this right now it means you are one of us who is still alive. I am so grateful that you exist. Right here, right now. And I hold so much grief for those who have passed. Especially for those who die young, dreams still swirling in palms. Eyes still bristling with the light of a secret, impossible fire.

We'll be gone one day too. As will every other being that ever walked this earth. But nothing will ever erase the beautiful moment in time when we owned the god damn universe.

We queer humans are an impossible swell of brightness in the dark.

We are the teeth of defiance.

We are too much sun in the rear-view mirror all at once.

We are the infinitely unlikely story of the time when the cold machinery of the universe learned to love, and love in whatever god-damned way it wanted—no matter what in the hell anyone or anything else had to say about it.

To be human is to be living proof that love can erupt wildly in the sky from out of nothing.

Unannounced.

Because fuck the void.

It is a miracle.

This breathing dream where we rent the emotions of Gods and Goddesses.

Where we rent hearts and minds, limbs, lungs, and sinew from the dirt at our feet. Our mother’s wombs.

A miracle.

What could mean more than to have been a part of such a thing? There is no gift more wondrous. I would beg for frailty if that is what it took to experience these intermittent swells of bliss.

To love ferociously in the face of the void.

What could mean more than this?

I am so happy you had this experience, Waylon. I am so happy we all did. I mourn for you as I mourn for us all. For all the world, I cannot shake the sensation that when one beautiful person in my life dies, we have all died. Because in truth, we all but have. In this too, there is beauty.

I hope to the Goddess in the name of your heart.

Should they exist, I pray to the Goddess or God that is responsible for love and compassion and beauty--for all of the wonder and bliss and kindness in the world, that you rest so soundly and with the most beautiful and vivid dreams of exactly everything that you ever wanted. This is my wish for you Waylon. This is my wish for us all.

And I hope we get to meet again one day.

Until then, I will leave the lights on for you.

*~.’,-;<3

Attention: Waylon is still in desperate need of a burial plot and headstone. If you would like to support Waylon’s family, who is currently seeking a final resting place and visitation site for Waylon, please visit here, where your donation will help to give her body the resting place she deserves.

You can also donate here and be rewarded with an extremely soft t-shirt or hoodie as a thank you.

Goddess Bless.

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