the august roundup

who knew it could be so lonely?

it’s 8pm, here, on the other side of the world; the other side from most of you, the other side from the rest of my life, the life that has taken place before now, the life i packed into boxes and stuffed into the basement and kissed goodbye four weeks ago. there are only a few hours left in august, four, if we’re counting, but i do not count time or if i do i try to forget the rules of math and let the numbers swing themselves into the places they wish to sleep. it is not my business, what time does or doesn’t do, much like nothing is my business anymore, given as i have left everyone i know and moved (temporarily) to the other side of the world, and instead of worrying about things like months or newsletters or blocked phone numbers i spend all day walking in the grey and holding in my tears and courting gelato shops like lovers. the art is old, and boring, so old and boring i may not even go to the louvre; death to the classics, death to the romantics, death to the monarchs. long live the gallerias and photographers and multimedia artists. long live the oil painting made new again, long live picasso, long live goya, long live the black paintings and madness and photography retrospectives. i take pictures that i can turn into postcards and lick the ice cream from the cone and pretend i am going to change my life, pretend the thing we poets are always pretending, which is that it will work, the hope will triumph over the despair, the fruits of the harvest will not be lost to rot. but who’s harvest is it and who owns the fields? the olive trees in southern spain are droughted, dusted, dying. pakistan gurgles below a skyline of water. and the american west, i am sure, has once again turned into bone and ash. i am a body and a swan and a skyline and i am aching for something like home. i am twenty six and beautiful and i just want someone to name me as that. i think of the poem i wanted to write in boulder, when the death was still new, when i still hadn’t accepted you as a ghost. always i would accidentally find myself being the person i wanted to be, wandering in a snowstorm with a lantern made of dreams or outside the library as the trees wept their white tufts of pollen over the city; always i would think how much i wanted to be seen, how desperately i wanted you to look and find me beautiful. but you’re dead, or nearly there, and i figure i’ll find you on the other side of some porcelain toilet line, someday, somewhere.

you’ll die young just like you always wanted, and i’ll get old like i always feared, and i will have to do the work of living for the both of us.

what can i say except i did not ask for this work, but i will labor to it all the same? what can i say except i miss you, i wish you weren’t dead, i wish we were made of something lighter than human bodies? dispatches from the still-living: i wanted you to see me but now i am afraid every time i go outside. i do not know how to exist, how to just be, and everything i built back home to make that living easier i suddenly do not have here. turns out i am anxious. turns out i am socially awkward. turns out i am only really good at reading the room in one language. turns out some men find me beautiful, some not, but all find me odd. can you hear me, cyrus, over your almost dying? can you hear me over the roar of the atlantic? i think i’ll try london next. i think i’ll try bordeaux. you are prepping to be buried in a state you never wanted to live in and i am trying to make myself more alive. i just never thought i’d have to watch someone die. i just never thought i would be alone like this.

hi, reader! do you want a playlist, or some essays, or some articles to read, the way i usually provide in each monthly roundup? well, too bad. i’m drinking just enough cider and smoking too many cigarettes and tonight i’ll buy a train ticket somewhere else. tonight i don’t feel like a writer, or a friend, or even particularly a person. tonight i am not the author of this newsletter or your helpful librarian, scouring the internet for the best things for you to read and listen to. i am tired. i have not seen a face i’ve recognized in three weeks. i am ready to go elsewhere. i am ready to be loved again. too bad i don’t know where to find it.

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thanks for reading! and as always — love you! mean it!!! bye!!!!!

the manic pixie dream girl’s guide to existential angst is a free newsletter (and the occasional poem) from joelle schumacher. if you enjoy their work or would like to support it, you can subscribe to this newsletter, subscribe to or write in to their advice column, or buy them a coffee. they also offer an online creative recovery workshop, for poets & artists of all stripes.

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