My Dear Ex-Manager,

You

fucking

cunt.

I don't know where to begin. Maybe I'll start by saying that my lovely wife first called you a cunt after hearing my stories. And you're the one person she allows me to call a cunt. I can just start talking about "that fucking cunt" and she'll know it's you of whom I speak.

Oh, you fucking cunt. Remember the Employee Appreciation Lunch, when all the executives stood up and said how much they appreciate the hard work we employees do. And then you, a manager, stood up for 30 minutes and talked about YOURSELF and how hard YOU work. Such a cunt!

Or after that first round of layoffs, in your office, telling me and what's-his-name that if you wanted, you could have everyone fired. That that's how powerful you are. Fucking cunt.

Remember how you cut down my idea for your stupid-ass project, and even told coworkers behind my back that I wasn't realistic. Then, two weeks later, you used the same idea and took credit for it. Cunt!

And why would you talk bad about one of my coworkers and tell me she's having marital problems? Were you trying to out-cunt yourself?

I could go on and on. Remember when you told a coworker, "mishmash doesn't believe in anything!" Didn't you know that would get back to me? You fucking cunt. I actually took it as a compliment. That I was one of the few to stand up to your bullshit.

Of course it all came back to bite me in another one of those many layoffs, when it was my time. I've got to admit I appreciated that you threw a few perks my way at the end, and even expressed regret that you had to let me go. So thanks for that. I guess even you can't be a perfect cunt all the time.

Sincerely,

mishmash

The following is based on a true story:

In 1969, the bridge hadn’t been built yet

Poor Araceli, mother of five

By the time they pulled the third child out of the river

She had collapsed,

Clutching at her chest

Clawing at the skirts

Betrayal of a sinking truck, a selfish impatient man, and a husband

Poor Araceli, mother of five and three dead bodies

Back then, it was only a trail down the mountains from El Salvador down to Tequila

Only burros and donkeys and horses alike—maybe a truck sometimes

Three hours wayside

Husband hitched a ride, told his wife and children get inside

Piled into the cab next to the smoking driver

When they called in divers, we smelled it first

The smell of rot

Of the third son, so young

Ay, the six month old, the one she had last summer, widow next door whispers

As they dragged his bloated body through the street

It was only a raft in 1969

Poor Araceli gone to church

Whole town’s come to pray

A thousand hail marys

We will pray until we are sick

We will pray until those poor children are in heaven

One person goes first—ninety nothing prayers—the next starts to lead

Lord bless these poor babies

All we had was prayers to give

Baptized in the rivers of Amatitán

Raft unbalanced as it tips over the side

Sending the family of seven wayside still inside

When they announced it on the radio that the divers found the third child

And Araceli looked at her two young children left in guilt

And stood quiet as they told her, we found his head stuck in the back window of the

This is punishment for surviving

This is the punishment for living

Lightning’s struck twice and god’s abandoned poor Araceli

Come town crier,

She’s a victim of a man’s hurried desire

To get across a river

Whose bridge had been embezzled and immolated seven times over before it was born

Bribe the priest

To bless the funeral and bury an unbaptized baby

Husband sits so perfectly, so angry as they lower them in their final restings

Poor Araceli,

Sits vacant-eyed

Husband can no longer speak to her

Mother in-law combs her hair, ushers her here and there

I’m afraid there’s just nothing that can be done here

Mother of mothers could not save her

We buried her about a year after.

Litany II

In 1969,

The truck driver fled

Scared of being strung up for his ways

Returns

After the family is long gone

They are all publicized relics now

Twists his foot inside the widow’s door

My love, mi amor

Fucks her while guilt or maybe narcissism or maybe the fact they should've gone one by one—family first, then the truck, then continue on—eats him from the inside

Smoking rolled cigarettes and drinking a fifth

He's got a scar on his lip

From the last man's wife

Son plays soccer outside

So childish and so immersed in violence

Teenage boys getting drunk under orange trees and fighting and crying like lost babies

They have all seen men die before the age of eighteen

It’s depressing, really

Sitting in a sleazy bar,

Drunken, bragging about all the girls he’s done before

Son sits with his friends

Listening to his unrepentance

Oh look, here comes the widow’s name

Out of his mouth

I wonder what the son will do now

Get my mother’s name out,

Laughter

Carries on talking about the boy’s mother in this manner—

Storms out

He’s hotblooded and he’s got the anger and the firepower to prove it

Cantinas carry a collection of bullet holes around these parts

Today, there’s another one

Marking the spot in the bar

Where a son shot the truck driver

We ducked beneath tables and watched him bleed.

Ojo por ojo.

Diente por diente.

Dead daddy’s pistol served its purpose

And so the son flees

And the world continues on, furious and bloody

Families fractured, saints delivered, guilty guns and well-loved widows

Mother of mothers, come save them

Pray over each of their caskets

May they each find their way to damnation

May they each find their way to salvation

Mother Mary, if we are born to die,

please let it be nice

In the early 2000s, the Puente de Amatitán-El Salvador was finally built.

Today there is a dam. Today there is a road. Today there is a bridge.

This does nothing for them.

If all you meet are assholes, maybe you're an asshole.

Some things you only need to hear once and they will stick in your brain.

Write about someone unbearable, they prompt me.

Well, to myself I say this:

Why couldn't you save your marriage?

Why couldn't you control your temper?

Why were you not satisfied with your life after the military?

Why can't you just feel happiness like anyone else?

This man is a jerk, and most times I hate him, though the reason remains mostly undiscovered.

Perhaps he will become my catalyst to do better. Time will whisper the answer to me in the wind.

It is the only sound I hear now that my loved ones have dispersed away from me and only an empty house remains.

Maybe I will write about it, instead of picking up my gun and killing him.

I read in the New York Times recently

that pedophiles in Louisiana

can now be ordered to undergo

surgical castration

and not merely

a chemical alteration

making that the only

happy piece of news

out of that publication in ages

especially from that state

where abortion is "mostly illegal"

but even in California

nothing that radical has happened

regarding pedophiles

at least Louisiana

can recognize this evil

and move in the right direction

even amongst this country's

current political turmoil

She gives me that look

You know the one?

Like I'm worth nothing

Like I'm too ugly and pathetic

And she's annoyed she's had to notice me

That even with my ribs sticking out

I'm grossly overweight

My hair's too frizzy

For her ever critical eye

My nose too pointy

My eyes too small

My lids too creased

My lips too thin

The hair above my lips

Too disgusting for words

I shrink beneath her withering gaze

But that just brings her notice

To my slouching shoulders

I can't even stand up straight!

She sneers at my rounded belly

At the dimples on my thighs

'Til I want to die of shame

Whispering cruel nothings

In my too-large ear

The running commentary persists

Until finally, crushed, I turn away

Wrap my towel around me

And leave the woman in the mirror

To go about my day

Collecting my shreds of dignity

Around me like a cloak

- Until tomorrow

I remember her pretty perky asshole

tight pink with stray hairs protruding

it was the one body part off limits to me

one I thought of that taut tense unyielding

squeeze compact compressed stretched wide

her asshole and her undivided attention

warmth tenderness intimacy attachment

all denied while the rest of her dripping

wants needs demands obligations open

for prodding probing deep hard always

she was an asshole with an asshole I craved

yearned for massaged inserting a single digit

once forbidden jerked away for being a jerk

not playing by her subservient asshole rules

I less for having crossed into the forbidden

she hurt me back as assholes do

plunging her digits into my chest

yanking out my heart and wringing

it dry hard dead unable to ever pump

vital fluids to my hungry starving depths

I did my monthly tarot pull last week. In preparation for the new month, I thought about Junes of past, present, and future. I thought about my brothers birthday. I thought about the thick southern air. Illinois corn fields, state fairs. Work. Applications. School. Adulthood. Precipice.

I thought about a red flag as blatant as a soiled tourniquet. Crimson. Glaring. And after that summer, I have a strict list of things I will not put up with, of bullshit not to be tolerated. (I'll smoke my trees raw and not take them in gummy form. I will not bake for any new partners until month three.) My unconditional kindness is my Achilles heel, and bitch you are the arrow. (I will never date anyone with unresolved mommy issues. Matter fact, bring your therapist to the door with you or you will not be permitted enterance) And how I allowed a self serving, privlaged white girl to shoot me, I will never know. (Anyone who specifies that they have commitment issues is not for you... I feel like that should have been obvious from the start) Bella, you taught me so much, and for that I should thank you. Valuable life lessons like,

Truth without kindness is cruelty.

And how to spot a person who is good for real.

And

You can drag my name through the mud all you want, that new girl is not going to see you any different. I hope you're better to her than you were to me, she's pretty.

(There's a clear line between light gossip and "Wow lil mama, do you ever mind your business." Trust yourself enough to know where it is)

And lastly

The thing about good people

People who are REALLY good

People

They don't switch up. Even through all that you've done, I am still kind. I still love. I still pull my tarot every month. I still pray for my friends, for my mother, for my soul. Sometimes even you.

So talk your shit girl, you deserve it.

Just don't let it hit the fan.

“He is just lazy”

Or maybe it’s clinical depression you fuckwit.

”She just nuts, hyperactive and irresponsible for weeks then lazy and irresponsible for weeks. She doesn’t care”

For fucks sake! She has bi polar you fuckwit.

”He‘s so weird, he’s always darting his gaze around and mumbling to himself, it’s creepy”

Umm No, not weird, just symptoms of psychosis, you fuckwit!

”He is so self centred and cold, always interrupting me and changing the subject to something he wants to talk about. He doesn't even hug me or hold my hand”

Yep, maybe get him tested for autism, you fuckwit.

“theyre not sick, they don’t need help”

Shes never understood mental health, won’t listen to anyone who tries to explain it , and then has the fucking nerve to tell them they’re not unwell and not need support.

shes a fuckwit

Sitting around bitching by the coffee pot I should have pissed in. Yelling about nothing while he's built like Thanksgiving stuffing. Probably gets no loving with his belly and chin so repulsing. A disgusting blob eating his bag of Dorito chips and having a cow. Talks down on others when they turn their back. He's so damn loud in the morning I think he's smoking crack. If he's not gimping around he's pimping Trump to you. Funny thing is Trump wouldn't want anything to do with him or his shitty attitude. He's lucky I'm a nice guy and don't demand some gratitude.

It can be difficult these days to try to treat everyone, as much as possible, with empathy. To try to see the small, dim spark of goodness in people. But sometimes, they make it too easy to let go of your carefully cultured restraint. And yet, I still refrain from direct personal insultation. Rather, I tend to simply point out the truth, which people absolutely loathe. I have learned that you don't, in fact, have to be mean and childish to insult someone, you just have to give them a mirror. It's surprising just how similar to Dorian Gray so many people are. And they know they are. And they hate themselves, deeply, because of it.

I encountered one such woman recently. She was taking great pride in the fact that she had not "let herself go" after having only two kids and that other women who did were, in fact, "lazy." She was the pinnacle of womanly achievement, and all others should strive to be as good of a mother and wife as she. I praised her for being the ideal specimen of womanhood. Surprisingly, she accused me of being rather snarky. I simply pointed out to her that she, herself, had sung her own praises and I was merely congratulating her on such a wonderful accomplishment. Again, she was unhappy with my response and subsequently deleted her comment on the popular platform, much to my dismay.

May we all remember that seeking validation online is an empty act and humility should be a more prominent practice.