and hopefully convinces you to move to fleefletown
Mayor Yoval here! Meep City kind of sucks (sorry, Mom), don't you think? It's probably much better up in Fleefletown. In fact you can check out our page on Meeptropolis, if you want (and you definitely do)! See how many exclamation points I'm using?? Do you see them!? Aren't I way more fun and exciting than the Meep City mayor is? Who is the Meep City mayor, anyways? I have no idae. Oh shoot, I misspelled idea. But look, everyone makes mistakes, even me, the Mayor! And yes, Mayor is capitalized because FLEEF FLEEF FLEEFLE I'm just so special! Wow, golly! Hahahaha! In Fleefletown, it's totally fine to make mistakes, and mistakes are just an opportunity to improve. Did you know Evangeline and Billy (who are, like, even cooler than me) are fleefles? They are! Wow! That's why you should move to Fleefletown. Meep City might have one Evangeline worshipping place but Fleefletown has three! THREE!!!
I cry at dumb things like the rain and the baby birds that sit in the cherry blossoms that line my street. I cry when I play a wrong note at the end of the concert and everyone knows it. I cry when the keys work against me, little stupid levers of anger. I cry at my sister, I cry at my father, and I cry for my mother who works fifteen hours on Saturdays while the rest of us eat Chinese food takeout from the restaurant on the other side of town. And I cry when I hate you and I cry when I love you. You and I used to cry together, back in some distant year. I fell off a tire swing once going too fast. Falling is the wrong word. I flew, flew straight into the ground and the woodchips pressed into my skin. Mom told me to make better choices and then she taught me how to sew up my ripped pants. With a needle and thread in hand, I mended things, but not the things that really mattered. You cried because you were the one pushing the swing. You told me you were sorry, though I didn’t care. I was a first grader. People think first graders don’t know how to care, but they’re wrong. They just don’t know how to care about the things people expect them to care about. I told you it was fine and then I cried because you were crying. But we were first graders, so we got bored of it quickly. We wiped our eyes with sticky hands and swapped places. I pushed you around in circles on the swing, and I saw you hold on very tight to the chains for a minute or two before you raised your body up until you were standing, looking down on the playground below you as I whipped you around in circles. Our tears were gone. For then, at least. When I got a sewing machine for my birthday once upon a time, I felt very happy about it until you told me you got a dog. A dog! And we shared a birthday. Of course we did. But what use was a dog? It sat around, or sometimes ran around, and it pooped and barked and all you did was clean up after it. We sat on the roof of your shed one night while we were supposed to be sleeping during a backyard camping trip, and you told me that you knew I was jealous of your dog but he was really the best dog in the world and his barks filled you with so much joy and my god, how badly I wanted to push you off of that roof right then and there. But that was a thing I wouldn’t be able to mend, not even with my new sewing machine. I didn’t want a dog anyways. I cried myself to sleep in my own bed the next night, thinking about you playing in the yard with Lucas the perfect puppy, and I saw him licking your face and I wondered, selfishly, if he would become your new best friend. Then you surrendered Lucas to the shelter after your brother became allergic and you cried, leaned your head on my shoulder. You told me that life was so unfair. I wish I’d gotten a sewing machine, you muttered as your tears soaked my shirt. I didn’t hear you for a second, your voice was so muffled. You told me, never mind, but the words materialized a second later in my brain. I kept them to myself. I cried with you but not for you and not at you. I cried because I knew it would make you feel better and not so alone. My mom, when she’s at home, puts on classical records. She tells me it soothes some deep part of her, the way the sounds cascade. Ravel’s Miroirs she loves specifically. I’ve always been more inclined towards the works of Pink Floyd, The Beatles. I own a vinyl of Wish You Were Here and I put it on when I’m home alone, when you cancel plans with me, when I’m sad. My mom says that if I was fleeing to a desert island the things I would take with me are that record and my sewing machine and probably my piano, too, but she’s wrong. Really, I would take that record, my sewing machine, and you. Not Lucas, not even if I could get him back. It’s selfish, but Lucas makes you cry in a different way than I do. He makes you a real sad. I just make you emotional. I am sitting in the bathtub while Mitski’s Puberty 2 leaks from our waterproof speaker. What do you do with a loving feeling when the loving feeling leaves you all alone? I don’t know. You make me try to figure that out because I love you so much and I hate it, I hate the way it makes me feel. I hate crying, and sometimes I hate you. The water is cooling but it still rushes from the spout like it doesn’t want to stop. It will keep coming until I twist it off, because I am its superior. My skin is turning wrinkly like I’m a raisin and I feel so stupid and alone. Raisins come in boxes full of other raisins, but where are my companions? You are in some other town somewhere far away. I miss you. I miss the you I know so well and I miss the you I’ll never meet. If I was going to a desert island, which would I take?