Dyke Mirage

You wake up behind a gas station in 29 Palms with glitter in your teeth and grief in your gums. There’s a Polaroid stuck to your cheek. In it, you’re kissing a girl with serpent earrings and a bruise shaped like Utah on her collarbone. You don’t recognize her. The back of the photo says,

“See you in the lounge, loser ”
in pink Sharpie.

You sit up. The mattress is sandpaper. Your skin is peeling in hieroglyphs. Your backpack is gone, but someone’s left you a wristband woven from expired Plan B packets and faded festival admission stickers. It spells your name wrong. You don’t correct it. You kind of like the new you. The desert hums around you. Not like wind — more like bass from a party happening in a dimension two inches to the left. You squint at the sun. It winks. You wink back.

A paper map flutters up from the dirt and slaps your chest. In crayon, it says:

WELCOME TO DYKE MIRAGE
Begin where you last bled joy. Exit when your hands stop shaking.

You don’t remember buying a ticket. But you stand anyway. You follow the smell of burnt sage, cheap tequila, and unresolved lesbian tension.

Check-in is an ice cream truck blasting slowed-down Robyn. A girl in a neon vest and angel wings scans your aura with a glittery key fob, then chews on her lip thoughtfully.

“Your ex is here,” she says, not unkindly.
“Not that one. The core one. Be chill.”

She hands you a tiny zine titled “What to Do If You See Her” and offers you a lukewarm juice pouch labeled “Moon Guts.” You take both.

Behind her, a hand-painted sign reads:

DYKE MIRAGE: YOU CAN ONLY STAY IF YOU’RE UNHINGED

You are.

The first tent is a kissing booth, but no one’s behind the counter. There’s just a pile of carabiners and a loop of recordings that say “I’m not ready for a relationship right now” in twelve different tones of voice. You drop your car keys in the offering bowl. You don’t have a car.

A girl passes by holding a mason jar full of bathwater and weeping. She’s barefoot, wearing a flannel button-up covered in pressed flowers. You make accidental eye contact. She whispers, “She kissed me in a dream and I woke up craving peaches,” then vanishes into the next tent.

You start walking toward the Salt Flats, but the ground becomes sticky — like sap or honey or nostalgia. That’s when the first strawberry rolls past you. Just one. Perfect. Red like rage or love or both. It leaves a little trail behind it, sticky and sacred. You follow.

You pass tents named:

Cry Gently Into This Fern

Codependent But Make It Art

Text Her / Don’t / Do It Anyway

The Lesbian Time Loop Lounge (DO NOT ENTER ALONE)

You think about going in. You don’t. Not yet. Another strawberry. This one is warm, like it’s been cradled in a memory. You don’t eat it. You do cry a little. The sun is starting to lower. The desert glitters with unresolved metaphors. Somewhere nearby, someone is playing Tegan & Sara slowed to funeral speed.

You whisper: “I think I’ve been here before.”
The wind replies: “You never left.”

The wind kicks up as you approach the summit. Not a regular wind — no, this one tastes like bad decisions and unfinished playlists. The sand sticks to your lips like glittery guilt. The sun’s higher now, but also… sideways?

The entrance to Sandstorm Summit is guarded by three girls wearing boots, harnesses, and sunglasses that reflect your worst mistake. They hand you a consent form printed on rose petals.

“You’ll be excavating,” one says.
“Emotionally,” another adds.
“And possibly literally,” says the third, gesturing toward a tent marked EXCAVATION PIT — DO NOT FALL IN LOVE DOWN THERE.

You nod. You were made for this.

Inside the Summit grounds, every tent is a trauma. Every sculpture is a coping mechanism. Every conversation sounds like a podcast you’d only listen to if you were crying on the floor in your ex’s hoodie. You attend a workshop titled “Making Out With Ghosts Who Still Follow You on Instagram.”

The facilitator — someone named Spindle wearing fishnets and a lab coat — guides the group through visualization.

“Picture her,” Spindle says. “The one who broke you gently. Now picture the message you almost sent last eclipse. Now burn it. Or tattoo it. Dealer’s choice.”

You draw it on your arm in permanent marker. It says:
“I hope you miss me in casual, inconvenient ways.”
A girl next to you weeps into her kombucha.

You stumble into another tent by accident. It’s dim and lit with neon signs that say things like “SORRY I COULDN’T LOVE YOU BACK” and “SHE BLOCKED ME IN THREE DIMENSIONS.”

A panel is underway: “Which Houseplant Were You In Her Eyes?”
The moderator asks you point-blank, without looking up:
“Fiddle leaf fig, peace lily, or emotionally stunted succulent?”

You answer without hesitation:
“Snake plant. I thrive on neglect.”
A chorus of sad lesbians snap their fingers in approval.

Someone passes around tiny scrolls labeled “Unsent Texts & Things I Should’ve Screamed in Therapy.”

Yours reads: “I built a home out of your inconsistencies and then got mad when it crumbled.”
You fold it up. Tuck it behind your ear like a cigarette you’ll light in a dream.

There’s a tent just labeled “The Screaming Circle.”
You go in.
Everyone’s in flannel and crop tops and emotional damage.
No talking. Just screaming. One at a time.
When it’s your turn, you don’t scream her name. You scream your own. You feel your ribs rattle. You feel seen. You feel sick. You feel better.
Someone hugs you after. She smells like sunburn and lavender. She doesn’t say a word. You love her for five whole minutes.

As you exit the summit, a girl on a megaphone announces upcoming panels:
“You Deserved Better (But Still Wanted Her)”
“Should I Text Her? No. But Should I?”
“Breakup Yoga for When You’d Rather Rot”

The final tent before the ridge is more chaotic. People covered in gold leaf and band-aids are hula-hooping to slowed-down Charli XCX. One girl’s holding a rat. Another’s painting “DON’T CALL HER” on her thighs with sunscreen.

You’re handed a popsicle stick with a fortune burned into it:
“She wasn’t your twin flame. She was just flammable.”
You bite it in half. It tastes like strawberries and salt.

Somewhere across the dunes, a dune buggy roars in the distance, poetry fluttering in its wake like smoke. But that comes later. Right now, the wind is dying down, but something inside you is howling. You head toward the Tub District with dirt under your nails and glitter in your veins.

You whisper:
“I’m ready.”

The desert doesn’t believe you. Not yet.

You arrive barefoot. Of course you do. No one walks into the Tub District wearing shoes. The ground here is velvet sand and the air smells like strawberries, salt, eucalyptus, and ex-girlfriends. The tubs go on for miles. Some clawfoot. Some inflatable. Some just bowls made from grief and glitter. Each one is steaming. Each one is waiting. Each one knows something you don’t.

There are signs — but they lie:
“One Soak Heals All.”
“Bring No Secrets In.”
“Water Doesn’t Judge (But It Remembers).”

You pick a tub that looks like it once belonged to a rich widow who faked her death for love. It’s chipped porcelain and filled with pink water, tiny floating roses, and what you hope is glitter. There’s a strawberry resting on the edge like it’s been waiting for you all day. You whisper, “I’m not ready,” but you sink in anyway. The water sighs. So do you.
It’s quiet inside the tub, but not silent. You hear your own name echo like a childhood nickname no one uses anymore. You hear your last voicemail to her play backward in the bubbles.

Then the teacup floats up. Yes. That teacup. White porcelain, hairline cracks, gold rim. You got it last year. Or in a dream. Or maybe it showed up in your luggage after she left.
It hovers above the water and whispers:
“You left her on read.
She left you on purpose.
You left each other anyway.”

You try to swat it away, but it dodges like a mosquito made of regret.

“She said you were too much.
You pretended that meant nothing.
You tried to become less.”

The teacup spins. The water thickens. You’re not crying — you’re leaking.

A ripple.
The water shifts.
Across the tub — without a splash, without a sound — she appears.
Polaroid girl.
Serpent earrings.
Utah bruise.
Mirrored sunglasses even though the tent is dim.

You gasp. “You’re not real.”

She smirks. “Neither are your coping mechanisms, and yet — here we are.”

She bites the strawberry. Seeds cling to her bottom lip. You want to kiss them off. You don’t.

“Took you long enough,” she says.

“Time’s weird here.”

You talk without moving your mouths. Like telepathy through trauma. She knows everything. The way you reread texts until they dissolve. The playlist you renamed. The shirt you pretended didn’t smell like her anymore.

She asks:
“Why do you keep bathing in what hurt you?”

You say:
“Because I don’t know how else to stay close to it.”

She hands you the bitten strawberry. You eat it. It tastes like her laughter in that one voicemail you’ve never deleted. The tub changes colors. Lavender. Indigo. Salt-pink. Your body feels heavier and lighter at the same time. Like mourning and relief had a baby.

The teacup whispers one last thing:
“She’s not the one you miss. You miss who you were when she loved you.”

You nod. You sink deeper. You don’t drown — but you do disappear. When you open your eyes, you’re outside the tub. Dry. The girl is gone. The teacup is gone. But your lips still taste like goodbye. You walk through rows of silent tubs. Some hold girls curled into themselves like seashells. Some hold only bubbles and memory. You keep walking. Past the tub shaped like a womb. Past the one filled with tears labeled “from other festivals.”

Past the sign that says:
“IF SHE APPEARED, YOU’RE NOT DONE YET.”

You look up. There’s a rumble in the salt flats. A dune buggy is coming. Fast. Covered in poems. It starts as a vibration beneath your blistered feet, like the earth is anxious. Then a sound — part growl, part static, part bootleg mixtape left in the sun too long. People begin to turn, shielding their eyes.

And then:
She appears.

The dune buggy claws into the salt flats like it’s trying to rewrite the landscape. It’s covered — no, upholstered — in scraps of poems, song lyrics, newspaper clippings, napkin confessions, and bandage wrappers still stained with other people’s mistakes.

A shredded bedsheet flaps behind it like a war flag. In glitter gel pen it says:
“YOU CAN’T HEAL IF YOU KEEP PERFORMING YOUR WOUNDS.”

She slams the brakes.
The buggy squeals.
Everyone watches.
And she steps out.
Combat boots.
Aviators.
Sunburnt thighs.
A tank top that reads
“I Said I Was Fine But It Was Performance Art”

She’s glowing. Not metaphorically. Literally. There’s LED tape stitched into her denim shorts and a headlamp mounted to a glittery helmet shaped like a crying moon. She’s got a megaphone in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other. She raises the megaphone to her mouth and the desert goes still.

“GOOD EVENING, MISUNDERSTOOD LESBIANS AND EMOTIONAL SABOTEURS!”

Cheers. Screams. One girl faints into a sand angel.

“IF YOU’VE EVER FAKED AN ORGASM TO END AN ARGUMENT, THIS POEM IS FOR YOU.”

“IF YOU’VE EVER TEXTED HER ‘I HOPE YOU’RE WELL’ AND MEANT ‘I HOPE YOU SOB,’ THIS POEM IS FOR YOU.”

“IF YOU LEFT FIRST BUT STILL CALL IT ABANDONMENT — BABY. THIS POEM IS FOR YOU.”

She clicks play on the walkie-talkie. A distorted beat starts — like if heartache were a remix — and she begins to chant:

“She said I was too much.
So I became a universe.
And guess what?
She got lost in me.
On purpose.”

The crowd erupts. She tosses glitter in the air like rice at a wedding between healing and chaos. Then she points — directly at you.

You freeze. Your pulse glitches.

She tilts her head, as if reading you through the dust.

“You. Yeah. YOU. With the tubwater behind your eyes.”

“Your loop’s next. Break it. Beautifully.”

She tosses a cassette tape at your feet. It says, handwritten in Sharpie:

“Songs to Grieve a Girl By // Play This When You’re Ready to Let Her Go”

You don’t pick it up. Not yet.

She climbs back into the buggy. It coughs. It moans. It roars. Then she’s gone, disappearing across the flats like an emotional hallucination on wheels. Just like that.

Someone beside you whispers, reverent:

“She’s not on the schedule.”

“She never is.”

Another nods solemnly:

“Some say she used to be a version of someone someone almost loved.”

You’re left standing there, cassette in hand, tub residue still clinging to your bones.

Ahead, a sign glows pink in the dusk:

THE LESBIAN TIME LOOP LOUNGE →
(Do Not Enter Unless You’ve Rewritten the Ending At Least Once)

You pocket the tape. You walk.

The Lounge is a tent shaped like a VHS tape. It hums at a frequency only heartbreak can hear. Neon signage flickers above the entrance. The fabric walls ripple like a memory you swore you forgot. You hesitate. You think of the girl in the tub. The teacup. The cassette. You think of all the ways you almost moved on and didn’t. You step inside. The air is thick. Warm. Pink-hued. Scented like your ex’s old body spray and someone else’s playlist. Ambient music loops endlessly — Tegan & Sara slowed to heartbreak tempo, Fiona Apple harmonizing with regret, static layered over voicemail snippets. People sit on vintage recliners, floor pillows, old bean bags from childhood bedrooms. They’re not talking. They’re watching.

Each person faces a screen.

And on that screen:
Their Moment. Not a moment. The moment. The night she left. The text you shouldn’t have sent. The last kiss that didn’t taste like one.

Your screen blinks to life. No buttons. No remote. It just knows. And there it is. The inside of her car. Passenger seat. Nighttime. You. Crying but pretending not to. Her. Hands on the steering wheel like they’re holding the last thread.

The air between you: thick with I love yous that turned into silences.

You try to speak.

Every time you try — she interrupts. Or you freeze. Or the moment glitches and loops again.

She turns the music up. You look away.

She says, “I can’t do this anymore.”
You whisper, “Then don’t.”

She drives off anyway.
And again.
And again.
And again.

You scream: “STOP.”
It pauses.

The air pulses like a bruise.

A girl in a velvet suit and backwards baseball cap walks over and hands you a menu.
It’s titled: “Ways to Rewrite the Moment”

Options include:
Say what you meant, even if it’s ugly

Cry openly, not performatively

Throw the aux cord out the window

Ask her to stay. Mean it this time.

You circle: “All of the above.”

The screen flashes.

This time, you look at her fully. You say:
“I don’t want to survive this by erasing you. I want to survive this by remembering I was real, too.”

She doesn’t drive off. She just dissolves into static. Your chest breaks open. Not in pain — in release. The loop ends.

Around you, others begin to cry. Laugh. Vanish. One girl combusts into petals. Another turns into a mixtape. A third just… leaves. Peacefully. Through a door no one else can see.

You’re handed a sticker on your way out.

It says: “I Confronted The Moment and All I Got Was Myself Back”

You press it to your chest like a name tag.

Outside, the night is heavier. You sit alone under a busted disco ball dangling from a Joshua Tree branch. You press play on the cassette.

Side A begins:

“Track One: You Were Never Too Much.”

You exhale for what feels like the first time in years. The desert isn’t quiet, but it’s softer now. Even the wind sounds like closure.

The salt flats look different at dawn. You’re not sure if it’s the light, the loop, or the strawberry confession still clinging to your tongue — but something’s shifted. The tents are quiet. The wind is still. Even the chaos has curled up for a nap.

A glowing sign, handwritten on a tarp, flaps lazily in the breeze:

DYKE MIRAGE CLOSING CEREMONY

Attendance mandatory. Closure optional.

You walk barefoot through the final stretch of festival, past half-buried lanyards, melted candles, and love notes that got rained on from the inside. People are gathering at the center of the flats. Everyone’s holding a piece of paper. You’re handed one, too.

It reads:

Write a letter to the version of yourself who loved her the hardest.

You sit. The desert hums. You write.

Dear Me,

The you that stayed up re-reading texts. The you who thought maybe if you softened just a little more, she’d stay.
I want to say I’m sorry. But also — thank you.
You loved with your whole chest. With cracked lips and shaking hands.
You showed up.
And when she didn’t —
You still did.
You weren’t wrong to believe in her.
You weren’t naive.
You were brave.
You were blooming in a wildfire.
I miss your hope.
But I’m here now.
And I’ll carry it forward.

Love,
The version of you that finally let go.

At sunrise, a collective scream echoes across the desert. No countdown. No prompt. Just 300 queers howling at the sky like wolves with good boundaries.

It is sacred.

You walk to the offering fire — a giant metal sculpture shaped like a carabiner, burning softly in the center of the flats.

You fold your letter into a paper crane.

You whisper, “You don’t get to live in me for free anymore,” and you throw it in.

It flares. It’s gone. You don’t feel empty. You feel open.

The girl from the Polaroid appears one last time. She’s barefoot. Sunglasses off. Bruise gone. She looks like the echo of someone you could’ve loved forever, but only if you stayed small.

She says:
“Closure isn’t real, you know.”

She kisses your forehead.

It doesn’t break you.

She leaves.

This time, you let her.

On your way out, you find a table with merch no one remembers setting up.

There are shirts that say:

Soft but Knows What She Did

I Ghosted Her But In A Healing Way

Ask Me About My Tub Experience

Dyke Mirage 2025: Only the Unhinged Return

You take the last one.

Someone hands you a final strawberry. It’s warm. Familiar. Real. You eat it. It tastes like peace. There is no shuttle. There is no check-out. You just wake up — back in your car, parked outside a Circle K off the highway, your phone at 3% and full of notes you don’t remember writing. Your wristband is gone. But there’s glitter in your nail beds and a cassette in the glovebox that says:

“You Survived. Make Art.”

You hit play.

You drive toward something that could maybe be called healing. And behind you, if you look just right —

Dyke Mirage glimmers.

Just for a second. Then it vanishes.

DEDICATION

For every lesbian I know. And all the ones I don’t — yet.

This story is for the flannel-wrapped heartbreak healers.
For the girls who carry carabiners and complicated feelings.
For the ones who make Spotify playlists instead of texting back.
For the combat boots that walked away and the barefoot softies who waited.
For the ones who show up hard in their friendships, who bring snacks, who remember your moon sign, who hold space even when they’re hurting.
This is for the girls who can’t go to Trader Joe’s without running into an ex.
Who block and unblock like it’s a sacred ritual.
Who write poetry and eat it for breakfast.
Who fall in love with girls who “don’t label things.”
Who do label things, alphabetically, by emotional damage.
This is for the ghosted ones.
The blocked ones.
The unblocked ones.
The crushes we never admit out loud.
The friends we maybe-kind-of dated (but it’s complicated).
The exes we still dream about.
The ones who held us when we were someone we don’t even recognize anymore.
This is for the lesbians who are still finding love.
For the ones who found it and built something beautiful out of it.
For the couples raising kids, gardens, or 17 houseplants.
For the ones who chose each other, over and over, even when it got hard.
This is for our masculinity, our femininity, and the magic in between.
For our intensity.
Our softness.
Our contradictions.
Our fucking excellence.
There is no love on earth like lesbian love.
Nothing so bright, so devastating, so unmatched.
So this story — this weird, glittery, bathwater-laced fever dream — is yours.
I hope it made you laugh.
I hope it made you cry.
I hope it reminded you that you are part of something sacred and strange and deeply, ferociously beautiful.
And if Dyke Mirage were real?
You’d already be there.
Crying in a tub, screaming at the moon, kissing someone who gets it.
I’d meet you under the disco ball at sunrise.
No closure. Just love.

✨

— Missy