Firefly Grove was an annual potluck for queer folks in the tri-county area. It started years ago as a handful of trans people sharing warm beer under a willow tree. Now it drew hundreds: lesbians with coolers full of artisanal pickles, gay dads chasing toddlers, nonbinary teenagers trading pronoun pins, and elders in camp chairs who’d survived the worst of the AIDS years and stayed to tell the stories.

Later, driving home with the windows down and Dez asleep in the passenger seat, Mara thought about the name of the picnic: Firefly Grove. Fireflies, she remembered, were bioluminescent. They made their own light. But they only lit up when other fireflies were around—when they had something to signal to.

The thing about being trans, Mara thought, was that joy never felt simple. It came threaded with the ghost of before—the years of button-downs and silence, of watching women laugh in sundresses from behind a window she’d been told was glass. Now she was on the other side, and her heart was doing something between a gallop and a song.

Here’s a short story that explores themes within the transgender community and LGBTQ+ culture.

So here she was, standing at the edge of the picnic, barefoot in the grass, feeling the sun press warm against her collarbones.

A kid ran past, maybe seven years old, wearing a cape and rainbow sneakers. They tripped, fell flat, and immediately popped back up. “I’m okay!” they yelled to no one in particular, and kept running.