day in the life w/ great calves

Wake up obscenely early. Think about a boy, get sad but not unbearably. Brush teeth. Don’t floss because you “forgot.”  Shower. 

Maybe choke up after shampooing–you thought again about all the places you’d rather be than a shower in Boulder shared with two other women. 

Wrap your hair in an old tshirt and sit down on your bed to write something very important. Fall back asleep for an hour and fifteen minutes. Wake up, cuss, take your hair out of the tshirt. Tame it.

Pick an outfit. Look at your body in dismay, and pick a different outfit. Do it again. After the third outfit, return to the first and convince yourself you look hot. Find your purse. 

Walk. It is important as an unemployed person that you walk. If you cannot have a job, at least you can have a great ass and chiseled calves.  

Check your email on the move, just to be sure nothing has changed. Listen to “New Partner” by Palace Music and feel kinda numb about the whole “trying your best” thing.

You start to sweat at this point. It’s hot and you’re at altitude–you are used to this. 

You drop the first of many resumes at a pasta place on the corner of 10th and Pearl. A bald man rushes forward to shake your hand. It’s clammy and you fake a smile under your mask. 

He takes you to a corner booth and asks you questions which you answer exclusively with lies. “I want this job because serving is fun and rewarding,” you say, though the answer is more about knowing you’ll make good money because you’re kind and tippers respond well to that. 

“What do you do when you feel overwhelmed?” He asks. You respond, “Just get through it, because I have to.” Which is the first honest answer you’ve given him. 

He shakes your hand again, and you wonder if people should still do that after all this time. 

You do this four more times, with varying degrees of disguised self-hatred. You pass the strip club you were once in heavy email correspondence with until the audition seemed scarier to you than eviction. You buy a dollar slice of pizza and eat it while walking. 

You get home then. It’s late afternoon. Your back hurts and your hips hurt and you wonder why it is that your body always seems to hurt. 

You open your laptop and decide you do have something important to write. That this is your life currently, and you aren’t really that ashamed of it. 

You’re a writer and a student and a friend and a lover and an unemployed girl in her 20s. It’s probably fine, you think.

Love you, dear reader.

Good luck.