My Melancholy Manifestos

My melancholy manifesto starts with a trick question. How does a man allow his identity to get whittled down to nothing? The answer becomes shoulder shrugs, IDK text messages, and little about my individuality as I sharpen the blade of my well-worn frustrations against society’s whetting stone. Only survivor’s guilt, unconventional wisdom, and naive notions that this world might show me mercy. I was flat broke and brokenhearted, standing in a b-boy stance at the center of whatever anarchy I had curated when it arrived, the circle of my survival collapsing like a black hole. My melancholy manifesto is nothing if not jerry-rigged. Nothing if not recklessly responsible. People label it as a tragedy, but that’s empty hyperbole. Everyone knows I crave hope and denial simultaneously. For every no to mean yes and every yes to mean no. Or maybe. Or later. My melancholy manifesto teeters foolishly at the precipice. Building itself up just to fall apart again.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto has me loitering on the outside of an inside joke, punchlines sailing by my head like bullets. My melancholy manifesto becomes a dream that refuses to sleep. A nightmare that parties all night and calls after 2 AM, hanging up like a prankster as I utter hello. It claims too much certainty exists in uncertainty, too many arrangements of estrangements. My melancholy manifesto chants no pressure, no diamonds, so I also repeat that hollow mantra while running headlong into manufactured disasters. There’s too much wild in the wilderness, bright and clean and full of feral silence. Too much open space for the closed-minded. My melancholy manifesto’s vision gets blurred with muddled clarity. Its sermon seems blunt as the promises of hell on billboards along rural highways. I imagine it gripping the handle as the knife enters me, waiting for the precise moment to twist the blade.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto needs more sunlight to grow. More thickness around the narrows of things. More shallow thoughts and deep regrets. To call it a celebration would be a lie, but occasionally it feels like a gathering of my closest frenemies. Gossip lurks behind my back while everybody gives me the side eye. I crave escape plans and brash decisions, so my melancholy manifesto makes a game of it. Hands over cheat codes so I can level up after each loss. After a while, I consume considerable amounts of gin and lament the collateral damage of careless choices. Unzip monologues and empty my mouth of secrets like a toddler does with a box full of toys. Soon, strangers offer the distraction of flesh to comfort me. Internalized messiness, desire piling on top of more desire until there’s no way out.

* * *

My therapist loves my melancholy manifesto like a house pet. Her nights are full of Chinese take-out and solitude on the sofa with her cats, but she’s all about judgmentally mapping my flaws. According to her, I still use my mother’s stubbornness as an outdated atlas, and regularly it guides me to ignore the obvious, trip over my intentions, and cuss under my breath. Kill two birds with one stone while taking zero accountability. Realize reason holds no value in a world where irrationality remains the accepted currency. My melancholy manifesto spends too much time inventorying my depravities and not enough time trusting the process. Everyone’s eyes stay open looking for the truth, even when blindfolded. Everybody’s face gives me disapproving looks like my mom’s, especially if they know I know better.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto pronounces sadness deliberately, exaggerating each s like a hissing snake. As if its narrative was derived from foreclosure notices, imposter syndrome, and Dear John letters. Fashioned from watered-down cocktails, lonesome ballrooms and trolling social media posts. By now, my partial thoughts are on full display. By now, my bravado betrays my poker face as I go all in with questionable cards in hand. I fear speaking mostly because I often say terrible things. I fear silence because it tempts me to speak over and over again. My melancholy manifesto loves redactions. The black marker covering up known revelations. Loves the façade of noble intentions, the testimonials that get unpacked like clothes from a suitcase. My melancholy manifesto mentions sadness as if it were a source of comfort. My melancholy manifesto says sadness like it is a threat.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto taught me how to take a punch. Showed me how to pick locks and cheat to win. I craved the adrenaline rush of petty crimes but hated the handcuffs. I was joking when I claimed to be breaking up with memory, again, but I was likely bedding the wrong women, and then my wires got crossed. Call it my chaos era, but only in retrospect. My melancholy manifesto explained why the things I love eventually fade into ghosts and then tracked how long they have haunted me. I kept emptying my soul onto beds and searching for solace in pillow talk. I stockpiled enough sins to learn that none is greater than those we commit against ourselves. The intentional mistakes that nudge us further away from who we want to be and closer to what others demand from us. My melancholy manifesto gave me scissors to unstitch the seam between the spiritual and sensual. Life became a tossed stone skipping across a lake’s surface, until it inevitably sank.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto enjoys it when rumors ricochet through cities like bullets. When I place my hand on the levers and gears of the propaganda machine. The tick, tick, boom of gossip detonating in somebody’s face. No matter how obsessed I become with destroying myself, there will always be a part of me that tries to keep things together. I need recycled redemption. I need another dirty martini. My mouth gets tainted with the aftertaste of liquor and withheld apologies. Really, I bleed all over the place. Hide in the attic until the emotional assassins vacate the premises. It becomes the worst sort of victim-blaming, but the best kind of tragedy porn. Karma keeps its promises, like it or not. My melancholy manifesto says if I don’t author my own story, somebody else will. My melancholy manifesto smiles whenever I say yes.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto shows patience and understanding if I follow protocol and stop all my damn bellyaching. Mostly, I find myself uneasy with small talk and big emotions. Obsessing over the beautiful decay of life’s rusty machinery. I keep squirming and misplacing my confidence around people that I will never see again. My melancholy manifesto talks of audacity and swagger as if they matter, but really, it is telling everyone to fuck off with its subtext. With a familiar scowl and a raised middle finger. My melancholy manifesto gets anxious as I ask strangers for advice. And even more anxious as I deliberately ignore it.

* * *

When my melancholy manifesto got onboarded, I sported a tie and cuff links while faking it. Making it while all buttoned up, all sold out. I carried business cards and convenient excuses in my pocket, but my slick talk was still sugary and soft like warm bread. My melancholy manifesto was pointing out the flaws of hustle culture when I placed a bullet on a conference room table. When I decided to go for it and shoot my shot. Here is the glass ceiling. There is the mailroom floor. During performance reviews, I practiced innovative techniques in passive-aggressive communication. Sketched a perfect map to the fast track. Here is the entrance fee. There is my exit strategy. There went my oscillating career arc, up and down and up again. Towards the end of my clout-chasing years, I wore fake Rolexes as symbols of what I wanted but would never own. In my melancholy manifesto, everyone always falls apart while practicing their elevator pitches. Everyone always falls apart.

* * *

All in all, my melancholy manifesto craves happiness. Rainbows and butterflies littering powder-blue skies. Yards filled with beautiful, blooming flowers. I drag optimism by its neck to the front door of grief and knock, demanding to be let inside. I arrange hope in a circle. Compose hymns about salvation, recite prayers for artificial enthusiasm, smut gospels, and splintered hallelujahs. I smile, but it is the eternal facade of cheerfulness taped over some other form of emotional manipulation. An outline of a grin superimposed over my default scowl. My melancholy manifesto craves radiance, but for what it lacks in light, it makes up for with gapped-toothed admissions and punctured silence. I cannot mention the promise of the future without recognizing the blood staining the past. Call it half-baked. Call it half-life. My melancholy manifesto will be halfway done before you notice it exists.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto feels like a distance run, and that run is an exhausting series of unrelated challenges described by imprecise groupings of words. My melancholy manifesto tosses beer bottles and cigarette butts into the front yard from the porch. Says everything seems Sisyphean, only with modern boulders of doomscrolling and doxxing. But my secrets are hidden inside a shoebox like dirty money, with an emergency bag packed and sitting by the back door just in case. I was paranoid in the beginning, but for what I lacked in composure, I made up for in risk aversion. My melancholy manifesto enjoys harvesting the fruits of my confessions, the truth so ripe that you could sink your teeth into it. My melancholy manifesto is nothing if not cunning. I have six cans of spray paint and two burner phones. I have a crateful of Molotov cocktails and contraband beneath a dusty tarp in the garage. I am nothing if not vaguely revolutionary. I am nothing if not ready.

* * *

We go on guard, off grid. Specialize in vivisection, indiscretion. My melancholy manifesto hurts like a motherfucker, but it’s the healing you need to watch out for, littered with therapy sessions and trauma narratives. We give away everything until we cannot afford to give more: the purest linen dotted with floral patterns, straight razors, hand grenades, matchbooks from neighborhood pubs. I can hide so many secrets inside my mouth by now, it’s ridiculous: sobriety tokens, summer crushes, the phone numbers of wayward women. We take everything we need until we need nothing. Bail money, rich intentions, poor advice, utter indifference. My melancholy manifesto watches while I cauterize the wounds in my soul without painkillers. With bruises on my arm from some back alley, backdoor, back of the barroom argument. Everywhere we go, I keep collecting talismans. Keep them spit-shined, hidden, and always nearby for good luck that never arrives.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto remains mostly foolproof, but often whatever seems failsafe is often doomed to fail. At church, my mouth gets filled with blasphemous ideas, half-truths, and the beginning of parables that end with bloodshed. I hush any restless thoughts to sleep like crying infants by whispering the alphabet backwards over and over, twisted lullabies with soft-spoken meanings. Recite countless Hail Marys in the vestibule and throw up inside the confessional without ever actually admitting to any sins. God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, but it’s just because they were the only ones who survived the last ordeal. My melancholy manifesto sometimes seems charismatic and sometimes seems apathetic, but I make it all up as I go along, my mind capable of the most hazardous improv.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto becomes a rundown getaway car, a failed scheme foreshadowing some other failed scheme. The horizon layered like a wedding cake, a streetlight unevenly flickering on and off as dusk slowly dissolves sunlight into darkness. The plot thickens like gumbo on a low but steady flame. I was cleaning up the messes other people left behind when my melancholy manifesto mixed ammonia with bleach and damn near choloramined everyone. I got trapped in the elevator trying to escape, but it was because of all the stuck buttons of my patience that I was aching to press. On off, off on, looking for a different result from the same repeated actions. I plead guilty to my Messiah complex, a series of unsolved Rolodex murders, and dry snitching to the police about the savage intentions of lightning in the night sky. My eyes unevenly flicker off and on as dawn slowly dissolves darkness into sunlight.

* * *

My melancholy manifesto holds onto a rusty blade of empathy that renders wounds of inevitable doom. Like a dead star, the afterimage of hope remains long after its gone. People will trade a favor for a favor until everyone has shitty credit. I keep leaving my melancholy manifesto in the canned food aisle at the grocery store, but it always finds its way back to me, later knocking at the motel room door with dramatic flair. My melancholy manifesto plans to show up fashionably late to my funeral. Plans to sing my praises with the same mouth it uses to call me a sonuvabitch. Plans to recite an incendiary eulogy and then stroll out the door just as the church catches fire.

* * *

Soon my melancholy manifesto becomes handy enough to build shelters out of scrap wood and empty propane tanks. I am still pretty damn petty. Still a low life who plays devil’s advocate to other folks’ high hopes. Still preoccupied with keeping up appearances as the future unravels around me like an old sweater. My melancholy manifesto heads out to play after school and I whistle for it to return at dinnertime, feeding it all it can stomach until it can stomach no more. It subtly mentions the brutal obligations of memory, reminding me about all that I have lost and all that I will never find. After midnight, I’ve taught my melancholy manifesto to sit quietly in the corner until it’s time to go to sleep. Taught him to say the right thing at inappropriate moments and still feign innocence. Despite my insomnia, we ironically sing this song during karaoke nights about sweet dreams and what they are allegedly made of. Sometimes the word disagree gets lodged like a barbed apology in our tender throats.