Niko Stratis

I foolishly want milestones to mean something, less out of desperation and more from a desire for days and landmarks to mean more than they are capable of. Values I placed on monuments that live only as washed out images in the rearview, all half-remembered and fading out of view.

This is all artifice, it is beautiful for it, and we are lucky to be here together to watch a world of someone else's creation live and fade around us.

*This piece originally ran in Bitch Magazine in 2022. I wrote it firmly believing that a trans woman writing about Jackass wasn't going to set the world on fire, and it didn't, but it was nonetheless surprisingly well-received. I will never forget getting a text from