I wish I was one of the flying foxes that flits over the city's amber sky. They are free. I am chained to a life with no future by familial obligations. I am just an extension of the family name, a cancerous tumour, not a person.

Even if I was fully human, leaving in these conditions would be a travesty, what with academics discussing to what extent the war my sister, my nephew, my extended family are living through is fucked, whether certain actions taken against half of my ethnic background by the other half of my ethnic background, the half I was raised was actually important and not a backwards mire, could count as genocidal. We the diaspora must now stick together; abandoning them or being queer would be viewed by them as a fucking abomination, I know from experience. I fear the family'll eventually pressure me into marriage to a dude I would be unable to love, and continue the family line.

Sometimes I dream of our old, stupid plan to flee to Paris and build a life with her. We haven't talked in eons.