Intent to Punish

Nothing New. From 2020

That’s me 🙋🏻‍♀️. I don’t have shit to say to anyone lol

The first snow revealed itself to me under the streetlamp on the corner.

Gaby isn’t impressed in the slightest. She’s from Wisconsin, which means she takes two things for granted: Culver’s and the first snow. I just like the way it coats parked cars and dead grass, like the month-old dust on my dresser, on neat piles of unopened books on top of my dresser. I could swipe my thumb across the surface, but that would mean acknowledging that I enjoy watching it gather.

Aside from reviving my role as nature’s voyeur, the first snow always makes me contemplate the passage of time, as do most minor inconveniences and lulls in conversation. What’s changed since the last time I woke up to sludge lining the streets? To answer with “everything” seems dramatic.

I measure time in music releases. Last winter was Tinashe’s Songs for You, February decidedly belonged to Dua Lipa, and Fiona Apple’s first studio album after an eight-year drought will always score that panicky April and May.

And then I received an email.

“Do you like Phoebe Bridgers?” read the message. There was a sizing mistake, not one worth exchanging or demanding a refund about. And the shirt was mine, my professor said, if I wanted it, but just let her know so it doesn’t go to waste.

By the time I let her know, I did like Phoebe Bridgers. A lot. And my depressive episodes loved her. Her sophomore album Punisher dropped in June and cemented her place as the sad white woman in my rotation. 

Procrastination is carceral in nature. Squandered time with nothing to show for it, a cruel and unusual punishment. I sit among stacks of empty checkboxes until they become skyscrapers. When they topple, and they always do, I find myself buried alive but never surprised. I poke at the rubble one piece at a time until I emerge and then have the audacity to wonder where the summer went. Pausing an album on the seventh track, my ears are flooded with three weeks’ worth of white noise. My listening history evolves and I sit, stare.

I don’t know how to make time pass, only how to put things off. 

That’s why I didn’t reply to the email until the last week of August. 

(I got the shirt, I wear it to bed.) 

The semester inched along until I withdrew from all but two classes, and then I saw snow. 

It’s the chance to make myself feel bad, usually about how long something takes me, that keeps me moving forward.

Gaby and I load the dishwasher every few days. It’s nice to remind ourselves that we can, that we don’t have to stand by as things pile up.

“Ironically, Punisher has been my album of choice these past few months,” I told my professor. “I haven’t written anything new in a while.”