This is my sign on and off as your humble, ineffective editor in chief of Café MFA. It’s been a hard semester on everyone. From starting online, to Covid cases, to thesis submissions, to the fact that the Café MFA site just disappeared over winter break. Humans are intergalactic dandruff. Every day is the comb. I want you to know I love you. That an imperfect, marginally functional, shitty little tranny shit loves you. Want you to know she survived this thing with several triumphs and harms and moments of peace. I’m finishing this thing off the heels of the first time I got Covid and graduating and I’m gonna miss you. This is the final installment of my series of “Spotify Playlist for Struggling Graduate Students”. I hope you all enjoy and I’ll miss you very very much.
Image Credit: cottonbro
Stay by RIZ LA VIE
In the car diving home from another date with my ex, he puts on Stay by RIZ LA VIE. Then he puts his head in his hands, and cries. Can’t remember if I told yah / but I like it when you stay. Cries harder than he’s ever cried in front of me before. He’s never felt comfortable enough to cry like that, I realize. Not supported enough. Let's stay young / Still grow / Stay fun / Build tho. Like he had to always be strong while I tumble dried. So, I put my hand on his shoulder. And, like grace, he lets me keep it there as I drive us back to what is now my apartment with all our shit still in it. It’s a couple days till I can’t go to my graduation that I didn’t want to go to anyway. Soon, I’m going to move.
…...
Me and My Dog by boygenius
On the subway, I discover boygenius, the sad indie girl supergroup the person I cheated on my ex with already told me about. She only mentioned it in passing because we were actually listening to Julien Baker in her car. It was messy. I’m messy. One of my pronouns is it. I dated that person for about a month. It wasn’t fantastic. My ex and I were open, I thought he knew when I hooked up with her, in his house. My big problem, he would tell me later, is excuses.
I had a fever Until I met you Now you make me cool But sometimes I still do Something embarrassing
And then, it shows up. Me and My Dog. In a shuffle of Samia. Spotify’s algorithm appearing conscious and benevolent like a bird trapped in the subway.
I was his little fuck up. Little foxgirl / bunniboi thing. And he was my Pit Bull Shepard mix. My human animal. I surprised both of us when I was carnivorous.
I missed him in that subway station listening to this song that reminded me of betrayal. We hurt the one’s we love because the one’s who love us best do not love us for who we are but what we are to become.
Then the lines that made me wanna make this playlist
I wish I was on a spaceship Just me and my dog and an impossible view
......
Scorpio Rising by Soccer Mommy
We’re both Scorpios. A fact I would never forget to share. I’m an alcoholic. Not the physical dependency kind. In the three-day alcohol reeducation program as mandated by the state of Maine where I received my OUI, I learned that I am in the orange zone, meaning I regularly binge, lose control, and manipulate those around me to enable my addiction. It means I can quit anytime, I just actually have to. He brought me up to Maine so I could take the class because I couldn’t drive and at the time I was living with my parents who had already done enough.
Don't think of my life…
This week, the other day, my ex and I were on facetime because I have Covid and he’s being too nice. And I brought up that night at The Crucible, a local dungeon, where we did some public play. I said that I was trying to brat, and it wasn’t what he was vibeing with that night. He said, don’t I remember? I was really drunk. He couldn’t believe I got drunk at the bar even though I knew that we were going to a sex party after. He said I was mean to him and demanding things of him all night. Why he didn’t feel safe around me or my consent. I said, “ok, I’m done pooping, let me wash my hands so I can give this my full attention.”
…anywhere but in your arms tonight Won't say it this time, can't even look back in your eyes
While I’m sick with covid, I watched a lot of Cj the X on Youtube. I watched their video on the movie Arrival. They argue, Ted Chiang uses intermixed tenses in his short story “Story of Your Life” to teach the reader about the nature of time in this universe. Time is not a chorological, linear progression, but rather a squiggly eldritch horror of events, eternally overlaying each other like so many instruments piled in a song.
“Do this with me,” they say, “think of a moment form your past that creates guilt in you.” They raise their right hand to hold this moment. “Something bad that happened.” The words “bad memory” appear above their right palm. On the other side of the screen, they raise their left hand. “Now, think about something in your future that you are excited about…” “exciting future” appears above their left hand. “…that you know is going to happen, and that you know is going to be a beautiful thing. Now you look at both and you say,” looking toward their bad memory, “‘it happened, it will happen, it’s happening right now.” Turning to their exciting future, they say, “it happened, it will happen, it’s happening right now.”
“How’d that feel?”
Oh she's bubbly and sweet like a Coca-Cola I watch from my drink as you look her over
The horriblest part of me cheating is he thinks it’s somehow his fault. As if he could ever have done anything wrong.
I'm putting your hands to her heart
After I wash the shit off my hands, I say I’m sorry. I tell him that was fucked up of me and I need to watch my fucking drinking. My drinking is hurtful, and I did not do enough work on my drug use in our relationship and that was another huge reason we broke up. “Thank you for holding me accountable.” It is a gift. “It happened, it will happen, it’s happening right now.”
You're made from the stars And we watch from your car And I'm just a victim of changing planets My Scorpio rising and my parents
…...
Bipolar Baby by Forever the Sickest Kids
I remember what it’ll be like watching you when you are a day old.
-Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life
…...
Cashmere by Tkay Maidza
Today, I sat outside having a cigarette with my covid, and watched two cardinals flirt on a telephone wire. I thought about Cashmere by Tkay Maidza. Originally, I heard my favorite lyric wrong. I heard This time is the last time 'cause I'm soft like cashmere / Spreading out like a white flag. I thought about myself, about beach towels, sprawled out like hair, in surrender. Thinking about me, always, in surrender.
But that’s not the lyric. The song isn’t about me. It’s not Spreading out like a white flag, the lyric is Spreading out like awildfire. So, I should think about the velvety cigarette ash hatching between my fingers. I see the female cardinal, but I watch the male. He alights next to her, crested and exposed. He bays her, she looks not disinterested, then he shits and flies away. She waits around a little while he attempts to bury himself in the fresh spring maple, the one that used to fuck up the Tiguan.
I hope he’s happy where he’s at right now.
…...
Show Up by Samia
I’m on my back steps again. Rain has pooled in the rutted back yard. The light from the streetlamp from the alley behind my apartment collects in one of the puddles. This is an honest-to-god city. You should here this photo I’m taking, Mom. I’m having the universal human experience—trying to finish this cigarette before I utterly shit myself.
Blink. And I’m back a few months ago, when I just showed up at my ex’s door with a Turkish coffee. He hadn’t texted me back for weeks because we had been working through things, but then I admitted that I realized I had been cheating on him in our relationship with another friend because I was sexting them and I wasn’t explicit enough about what we were doing.
So, I showed up. Like a stalker, so disappointed in our whole cycle, and knocked on his door. I waited. He answered. I said, “hi.” And he let me sweat. I said, “will you accept these?” He took the coffee and pastry and held them like a new baby. I said, “I love you and I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a liar. That’s not who I am. And I’m not just gonna be one of those people who fucks you over and fucks off out of your life.” He looked at me like the sunset peeling off the sky from mt back steps.
NO WOODY! Don’t blink away again, stay in the fucking moment.
I said, “Sushi Taro, this Thursday, I’m making reservations, No good intention is ever good enough, stand me up if you want.”
I did not ask to come inside. I had no expectations. I still don’t. Even though I was Editor in Chief barely got this website up before the end of the semester. Today was graduation.
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