it was almost two months ago
my new job was going terribly

i had two managers
one was either a compulsive liar or losing her memory
to dementia or early alzheimers
the other one was a typical single, white, overweight woman
who enjoyed flying into fits of rage and preaching about white privilege
when she wasn’t giving angry lectures about how howard schulz’s wife
had nannies to help her raise her children

she didn’t like me
so i just quit, with no notice other than an email
saying i was resigning effective the time stamp of that email

two weeks before i quit, i had the saddest dream
about some guy i had a mental breakdown over ten years ago
i haven’t talked to him since some sad
emails in 2010, he never responded to my last email
i’de been looking him up online lately but retrieving no matches
because his name is so common and it’s been so long

in my dream he texted me or emailed me
magically, he had gotten my phone number
or one of the email addresses i use now
he wrote that he would be in my town
and asked if we could meet

i was really looking forward to it in the dream
i was getting ready, hair, make-up, clothes
i realized my dress had a ketchup stain on it
towards the end of that part of the dream

i don’t think my hair or makeup or face or body looked good
i looked like i look
ten years older and haven’t kept up or maintained anything
not that i looked good ten years ago, but i look a lot worse now
i sort of realized that when i saw the ketchup stain

then it occured to me that he never responded when
i either emailed or texted him back:
“yes, yes, let’s meet again”
there i was, excited, getting ready,
vacuuming a car I haven’t driven in years
i just wanted everything i wanted back

i thought we were going to meet that weekend
but then he emailed me saying
no, he wouldn’t be in town until the 22nd

march 22nd was on a wednesday this year
so i would have just been working late
and getting a bad review for anything i did

i quit my job on tuesday, march 21st, after a hard day of doing nothing
since then, i’ve drank a lot of wine, gotten ******, and smoked cigarettes.

i also found his mom’s facebook page
and his.

his is set to mostly private, but his mom had posted
some recent pictures of him and his girlfriend

he looked weak and unhappy in the eyes.