Donna was in love with Michigan like I'm in love with New Jersey and like you're in love with whatever place is somehow embedded in your bones and in the memories you never seem to lose.

Her home had been cruel to her, but as her thick fingers twirled the glistening pendant that dangled at her tan chest, she told me that love isn't just the good times, that it's the work you put in, “and if anyone's put the work into loving this fucking place,” Donna said, “it's me.”

Donna kept putting my drinks on the house and telling me stories from her adventures – falling overboard after lying her way onto an Alaskan salmon boat crew, getting tricked into signing her car over to a conman in Nevada – stories where she was always the fool or the foil.

She'd cackle like grandmothers cackle, high and loud and bouncing off of vodka bottles, and shrug her leathery shoulders, “I'm used to having the joke be on me. I might as well laugh at them.”

The stories she kept coming back to were the ones about Rachel. Maybe a girlfriend or a wife. Donna never specified, and these were the only stories that felt inappropriate to thumb at.

Every misadventure reminded Donna of a moment, a kind word, a passing touch from Rachel. Somehow getting lost in the Carpathian woods at twenty-two, before cell phones, with no money and a missing map, reminded Donna of a kiss, “that kiss happened not ten blocks from where your pretty little tush is shakin',” she smiled, only half there with me while she remembered warm lips, the tickle of fingers intertwining, the vulnerability, the light of the lamppost on Rachel's face.

Rachel was missing from Donna's life in a way that leaves a person hollow. How Rachel left, or perhaps was taken, wasn't a burnt forest that could one day regrow. This was soil both scorched and salted. Nothing could ever live there again.

Though Donna's heart was broken, a tender affection for Michigan still coursed through her veins. Perhaps it was because this was the place where her love of Rachel had once filled her with life. Every love story, every slice of life Donna cared to serve that didn't end in disaster, always involved Rachel and always took place in the hinterlands of the Midwest.

When she lingered on a memory for a moment too long, her eyes glassed in the neon bar light. “We could have bought a place safer for people like us,” she remarked, mostly to herself. “Somewhere with bijou coffeehouses and corporate parades. But this was our home. We made it here, together, and...” She trailed off.

Within seconds, a lanky gentleman with a communicative mustache walked up behind Donna and put his hand on her shoulder, as if he'd been watching us talk and had known what was coming. He leaned in and whispered something into Donna's ear. She clasped at his hand, looking up to him with a forced smile.

As he stepped away, Donna's attention returned to me, as if she'd forgotten I was ever there. “I won't bore you further, darling. Enjoy the Great Lakes, and if you ever need a friend, you know where to come.”

Robin Sinclair (they/them) is a queer, trans writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Their work includes a full length collection, two chapbooks, and publication in a variety of print and online journals and magazines.

Their most recent chapbook, SOMEONE ELSE'S SEX (Bull City Press, 2023), is about living and surviving as a damaged trans person in a damaged world. It is about sex, the commodification of queer history, the collateral damage of the closet, bigotry, finding love, and trying to heal. It is about queer liberation. All author proceeds are donated to the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund.

Find Robin at RobinSinclairBooks.com. They are currently moving away from Twitter (@ghost_of_mary) and looking to set up shop somewhere else.