September 2009
Cover letters are all the same. They’re useless. You write the same lies over and over again, listing the store-bought parts of yourself that you respect the least. God knows how they tell anyone apart, but this is how it’s done.
And then one day a car comes out of nowhere, and suddenly everything changes and you don’t know if he’ll ever wake up. You get out of bed in the morning, and when you sit down to write another paint-by-numbers cover letter, something entirely different comes out.
You start threatening instead of begging. You tell impolite jokes. You talk about your childhood and your sexual fantasies. You sign your real name and you put yourself honestly into letter after letter and there is no way you are ever going to get this job. Not with a letter like this.
And you send it anyway.
” —from Overqualified,
by Joey Comeau.
Hello.
I swear I won’t be too long.
Hello.
I promise i’ll be real strong.
Wait up, i just wanna tell you…
Hold up.
Why are you still here?
Why do, you wanna be all listenin to me?
Why do,
you spread your arms and tell me “i’m free!”
Why do,
you wanna be, in my life.
In my life…
There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.
The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.
The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet.
The street door was still open, just a little, where the knife and the man who held it had slipped in, and wisps of nighttime mist slithered and twined into the house through the open door.
i still want to read this. dont see how at all its a kids book, and i want to read it.
