The Heartbreak Bakery

But it does seem like I’m always the one who has to speak up and tell everyone how I’m different. I have to find a way to help them understand me, even though I don’t really understand them either. Having a gender? Why? Feeling like your body and who you are inside line up all the time? How? Identifying with other folks of your assigned gender as a kid, when I identified with things like extra-fluffy cumulus clouds and nebulas? What does that even feel like? I get nervous trying to explain myself sometimes. I get tired. I grow sharp edges where I didn’t think I had any. And I definitely get to the point where I just want to bury myself in baking and not deal with any of it.

I want to be with a person who orders my favorite cake just because it’s Tuesday. That might be my new working definition of love.

I can’t legally tell you to lick the beaters, but if you believe in living life to the fullest, you know what to do.

You are unprecedented.

They hand me one lemon, then another, and all I can think when their fingertips leave is that we're mixing ourselves together. That's what happens when skin presses skin. We think of ourselves as solid and separate, but we're not. We trade and swap tiny pieces of ourselves all the time.

All I can see if how much Austin is changing, all the time. There's so much construction equipment that it looks like they're trying to graft a whole new city onto one that's already here. For every building that I recognize, there are four I feel like I've never seen before

I grow sharp edges where I didn’t think I had any.

I think my parents think I watch queer porn on my computer late at night, but it’s mostly Schitt’s Creek and the She-Ra reboot.

The only person I’ve ever touched like this is W. But I’m a little bit different now that I’ve touched Harley. I’m a little bit new.

I scoffed and didn’t let her pinch a spoonful of the dough I was working on — lavender and lemon shortbread — a true punishment for Tess, who believes that all baked goods are best before they’re actually baked.

Do I keep some of these memories? How do I pick? Is it healthier to get rid of them all? Can you actually burn photos like they do in movies, or will that release some kind of noxious chemical? Do I stash them somewhere, so I’ll find them in ten years and laugh about my first love? Why does that idea — that I could fully let go of her — feel even worse than losing her?