Illustration by Kendra Malia

La Flaneuse is in a bad mood
I become hyper-jaded sometimes. I stare at people’s faces with contempt. Big fat root beer barrellheads. I hate someone’s laugh, echoing like a weak chill. I want to peel the smile off of a girl’s dunce face like peeling a fruit roll-up off the plastic. Her happiness is an affront to my astute sensibilities of cynicism. I want to disbelieve everything I believed yesterday. Especially if it was lovely and good. If it brings pink things to my mind, then I want to vomit shards of glass to feel what I believe, now. Today. I want to hate everything as hard as I can. I want to twist the thinning hair off of someone’s blue cadaver scalp. And I want that person to squeal the word ouch. Obnoxiously. Because that would somehow make sense. It would be a satisfying climax to my cruelty. Why do we all have to be so fucking pathetic? Why do we have to sniffle and hack? Why is the sky a putrid gray? What is this muddy- gravel scuffmark reality? I don’t think perfection is boring. Why can’t we have that?