Dear employers,
I will have to take the day off today because:
☐ It’s December and the streets are papier-mached with wet bronze leaves and it’s so dark outside that the cars have their headlights on at 3pm
☐ 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
☐ A dog looked at me
☐ 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
☐ Someone made a joke about dead pets meeting you in heaven
☐ Daylight savings time
☐ 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?
☐ Girls are too pretty
☐ For the first time I genuinely comprehend that there is not enough time to have all the lives I wanted
☐ I accidentally listened to Leonard Cohen
I am submitting the following documentation:
☐ A scrap of an old lover’s favorite flannel shirt
☐ Trembling cupped hands full of rainwater
☐ Light angling over the face of a brownstone at 4 on a winter afternoon
☐ A blunt-edged ticket stub from a movie of which I remember nothing except how soft her hands were
☐ A crumbling copy of my favorite novel from childhood
☐ The universe
☐ The peachy glow of a sodium lamp far ahead down an icy pitch-dark path
I think I just need to:
☐ Stare at a cup of tea held in nerveless fingers and slowly leaching heat
☐ Watch the sun glow ruby through the dogwood leaves until I regain some capacity to be comforted by beauty
☐ Read old emails from someone who loved me because he knew nothing
☐ Move to Omaha without telling anyone and find work as a sympathetic bartender named Roxy
☐ Learn to live alongside the fundamental meaningless of existence, not just mine but everyone’s
☐ Get a drastic haircut
☐ Listen to Tegan and Sara’s “Heartthrob” on repeat for 24 hours
☐ Scream into a pillow until my throat feels like it’s going to split
I will be back to work once:
☐ I can get out of this empty bathtub
☐ It is spring
☐ Someone gorgeous has brought me warm milk
☐ The consequences of being terribly drunk start to seem more grim than the consequences of not being terribly drunk
☐ I have watched every episode of Key & Peele
Sincerely,
________
annaxmalina
origamiaround
vaporwave
areudirty
snowghoul
izzy806
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
