Happy Hour

by Marlowe Granados

My mother always told me that to be a girl one must be especially clever.

She thinks it’s funny to make jokes about doom.

Me!!!!

Gala believes conversation should be brimming at argument. She says, “Anything less than difficult is a copout.”

Tattoos are funny because if you have enough of them, people get the impression you are tough.

and yet I'm just a crybaby girl

We would’ve gone home, but putting a cap on an evening of adventure can be tough. It takes practice to have restraint, and we are not yet at an age to try it out.

Gala called me a Real Piece of Work. I hope she meant artistically.

I would stay up late with him just for a glimpse of that warmth.

Seeing someone you used to love is like visiting a house you once lived in. Everything about them is familiar yet strange. The greater the distance between you, the more unbelievable they seem.

It’s important to know whom the music is for, and it was the girls and gays who invented parties.

It was made in Kyoto, a place I have only dreamed of going, and whenever I wear the thing, it is funny to think it has travelled farther than I have and seen much, much more.

Crazy things are always happening to her, and she never knows how or why.

I get it girl

Something about retreating to a washroom always provides a comfort. I have given and received plenty of advice in washrooms. It’s always the right place to have a summit.

and something around our eyes has changed; the brightness has dimmed.

When we were younger, everything for the first time always felt the best, or at least the Most, and sometimes getting older feels like striking the same chord and it sounding different.

It’s the time when people come home and turn on a lamp, and no one thinks to draw their curtains just yet. Civil dusk, it’s called. It’s the only hour in any city where everything suddenly turns familiar.

“I don’t know why it’d be hard for us to be funny. Women have been laughed at for all of time.”

“I’m somewhere between Outrage and Nausea.”

“I’m not being dramatic. I was just sharing a thought.”

Daylight crept through the windows, a reminder that things are always going on without you no matter what.

I am not strong! I want to tell them. I am simply enduring.

Her usual method of doing that was being in a relationship, but really, what is the difference between a cult and a boyfriend?

I do wonder whether who I am when I’m alone is who I am really.

“How can you really ever know someone? People change and are in a constant state of revealing themselves. To think you know everything about someone is to leave yourself vulnerable to surprise.”

Sometimes making bad decisions really takes no time at all. In fact, you realize you’ve been itching to do it all along. Deep down, I think it comes from being so angry at having to restrict yourself all the time. Because in the end, no matter how well you behave, someone will always dash your life’s work away with little to no regard. We are always swimming against the tide. How’s that for justice? If I am reckless, it is because I am tired.

“I’m still on my way. This was just the beginning, y’know. We’re both still making moves. I’m at an earlier stage than you. This is the summer we eclipsed.”

Am I not always shouting into the void, waiting to be responded to with courtesy? Is that not what I seem to struggle with each moment, wrestling to get other people to see me how I see myself?