Gold

Back then, if you’d asked Gold what she wanted the most in life, she’d have started here: as a kid, it was three things: 1) for the frightening chatterscream in her skull to stop every time she looked at the mirror, 2) for her body to make sense, and 3) to keep being her mother’s daughter. But as an adult? Just one of those. More than anything in the world, number three. 

She already had one and two on most days. Imagine. Three too, to be fair—but anxiety still rolled out of her over it, speeding off like tired thread. A wish is fear becoming hope, you see? And Gold was born with pre-installed fear. She was still learning how to transmute it, so she kept the third wish alive for emergencies, for just in case my mother turns her back too. The doubt wasn’t personal, because Gold’s mother had showed her faithfulness over years. Gold was only still here, alive, because she had a mother who asked: what do you want for yourself, my child? and listened after all. A mother who saw how un-at-home Gold was in her old body, asked, what is your real name? and then believed Gold immediately. Life is different with a parent who listens and believes; a parent who welcomes you well when you take yourself home to meet her for the first time; who lets a dead name go quietly into the ground.

Some people want sex. Some people want girlfriends and/or boyfriends who will hold their hands in public. Some people want to be chosen by