It creeps into morning consciousness, still fresh and naive, and sucks the life out of it. Pastel colours of a once calm mind turn grey and staticky. A new day, that was supposed to mean new opportunities and mundane magic, is now a pointless stack of minutes and hours, like old gum pulled thin and long.

It collects mothers’ tears, gulps vitality, and steals fathers’ sleep and dignity. It turns them into some unfathomable currency called euphoria. A child in pain trades her wholeness for it.

It doesn’t kill hope immediately; it plays with it for a while, suffocates it almost to the point of death, leaves it breathless, then resuscitates it for a few moments, lets it linger, and the cycle goes on and on. Eventually, something dies out. Myocarditis of the soul?

Its name is Trans.