jess zimmerman / "why I am not coming into work today"
I will have to take the day off today because:
â Itâs December and the streets are papier-mached with wet bronze leaves and itâs so dark outside that the cars have their headlights on at 3pm
â I have recently been through a breakup, or I have been through a breakup at any time in my life really, and I woke up today with the absolute conviction that I will never be loved again
â I got a text from someone for whom I feel a mix of concern and frustration and recognition and longing that is both more and less than romance
â Someone made a joke about dead pets meeting you in heaven
â Daylight savings time
â I passed a knot of flowers that were so bright they glowed through the dim grey water of the day and when was anything in my life last that luminous?
â Girls are too pretty
â For the first time I genuinely comprehend that there is not enough time to have all the lives I wanted
â I accidentally listened to Leonard Cohen
I am submitting the following documentation:
â A scrap of an old loverâs favorite flannel shirt
â Trembling cupped hands full of rainwater
â Light angling over the face of a brownstone at 4 on a winter afternoon
â A blunt-edged ticket stub from a movie of which I remember nothing except how soft her hands were
â A crumbling copy of my favorite novel from childhood
â The peachy glow of a sodium lamp far ahead down an icy pitch-dark path
â Stare at a cup of tea held in nerveless fingers and slowly leaching heat
â Watch the sun glow ruby through the dogwood leaves until I regain some capacity to be comforted by beauty
â Read old emails from someone who loved me because he knew nothing
â Move to Omaha without telling anyone and find work as a sympathetic bartender named Roxy
â Learn to live alongside the fundamental meaningless of existence, not just mine but everyoneâs
â Get a drastic haircut
â Listen to Tegan and Saraâs âHeartthrobâ on repeat for 24 hours
â Scream into a pillow until my throat feels like itâs going to split
I will be back to work once:
â I can get out of this empty bathtub
â Someone gorgeous has brought me warm milk
â The consequences of being terribly drunk start to seem more grim than the consequences of not being terribly drunk
â I have watched every episode of Key & Peele