A heart still beats, but the pulmonary veins are gone. These are the only vessels in the body that carry oxygen to the heart; without them, what returns is depleted. The heart labors anyway. It keeps its rhythm on blood that can no longer sustain it. (new paragraph) This is a piece about mourning: the trans friends, lovers, families, mentors, elders, and youth who found acceptance and home outside of Tennessee. Their absence is not incidental. It is the work of systematized erasure, and of the suppression and repression that follow. What remains here is a community that keeps showing up, keeps laboring, severed from the source of its breath. (new paragraph) You do not let go because you are ready. You let go because the thing was taken, and your hand was forced open.