half way through Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist play “Rhinoceros” she began to think of John. she always thought of him late at night when she was smoking and reading things that were weird, full of melancholy and trauma.
she made herself a cup of black coffee—stumptown blend from when she was in portland. she was originally hesitant to buy the coffee beans because she worried that it wouldn’t get through security but it did and when she told this to her friend later he laughed and said they don’t care about food they only care about liquids.
this made her feel dumb.
at this point i should mention that this friend is not John, John is dead. this makes her very sad to think about and i guess that’s why she was thinking about him while reading a sad play.
she sipped her coffee and smoked while looking out from her balcony. she wanted to feel so fulfilled by all the good that was happening in her life but she really just couldn’t at that point.
so many people in her life had died but this one really hit her for some reason.
she went onto twitter. she looked through their old DMs. she wondered if there would ever be a time where twitter would realize that he was gone forever and just delete his account and then all their interactions would be lost.
she immediately highlighted all of their messages and copied them into the note app in her phone. this process took a while because it takes while to load each page as you scroll up. they had literal years of messages.
when she pasted it into the note app it showed his twitter profile image and it made her laugh. it was such a clumsy brand he really tried to throw together but he was still the best writer she had ever met. she dropped her cigarette in her coffee and went to bed.
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Mallory Smart is a Chicago-based writer and Editor-in-Chief of Maudlin House. She is also the host of the brand-new podcast, Textual Healing with Andrew Tran. Find out more about her and her writing at mallorysmart.com/. Twitter: @malsmart
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image: Lindsay Hargrave
Rejection Letters 