A Cover Letter to the Girl I Matched With on Tinder by Scott Sorenson

Scott Sorensen
(206)-242-4194
scott.r.sorensen.26@dartmouth.edu

October 31, 2024

Dear random girl I met on Tinder,

I’m very excited to apply to be your boyfriend tonight. I’ve always loved women, but it wasn’t until getting on Tinder that I realized I could get this sort of connection without any thought or effort. When I saw your profile of you doing a weird duck face in front of a boat, I knew I had to apply.

I bring a unique set of skills to your company, such as cooking great gnocchi and decent chicken parmesan. I know how to make your dad laugh that carefree way you didn’t know existed until after you’d left for college. I’m great at drawing figure-8’s on someone’s shoulders, particularly as we fall asleep in a large leather armchair.

I’m also proficient in Excel, if you’re into that.

I am highly adaptable and can learn quickly on the job. I used to hate singing in front of people until one night, a girl laid on my floor and we belted 2000’s pop songs for hours. I used to worry I was unlovable, but then I told a girl every bad thing I’d ever done and she told me it mattered more what I did next.

To be completely honest, I would not be applying to this job if I hadn’t been laid off from my last one. I knew it was going to happen that night, so I wore my nicest jeans, combed my hair, and smiled as I knocked on her door. I went down like a gentleman. It’s just business, you know, losing people. One less person in the office, one more name on the resumé.

It never just feels like business.

Despite these setbacks, there’s one thing that pulls me back to this line of work over and over again: hope. Someday I’m going to kiss a girl in a stairwell and smile stupidly every time I pass through it afterwards. I’ll bury my face in her hair and smell safety in her shampoo. I am going to find someone to sing with again.

Random girl from Tinder, I’m not asking you to be my wife tonight. I don’t need tenure or a pension or even a contract to be happy. All I’m asking is that you eat some pasta with me, walk by the river, and kiss me goodnight. This last part is negotiable; we can sort it out with the union. I promise you this, though: I am a hiring decision you will not regret.

Thank you for your consideration, and I can’t wait to hear back.

Sincerely,
Scott Sorensen

ha·mar·ti·a* by Olivia Cao

/həˈmärdēə/

noun

1. you find glory in the laurels they crown you with: hero. and the blood runs gold, like ichor, like nectar, in the streets and down your sleeves, so heavenly you forget you are human. you rub noses with the impossible, skin your knees on the ineffable as you brandish your sword in the empty atmosphere, you the only one to rise where the air is uninhabitable, you the only one within arm’s length of eden.

2. when the inventor offers to build you wings, you do not hesitate to shake his hand, sign your name on the dotted line. what more could they want from you, those gods who thought you beautiful in heaven? and if they gave you the keys to eternity so easily, what else would they have you do but reach for the sun?

3. the smoke floats off the surface of the lake like sweat from skin, the scarlet spills from beneath your armor, and the guilt from the poison feeds the maggots in your throat, in your eyes. the backpackers take pictures and preserve your body on postcards.

4. we replay the crash-landing, the suicide, the blinding again and again and again from our basements, find ourselves unable to look away from the carnage, enamored, and when the castle crumbles above you and heaven goes up in flames, our heart’s blood runs clear. we were not the reckless ones, only the witnesses. you sit in silent prophecy as we label you and all the others that which was destined to fall, as we carve your names onto the warning signs and lose your legacies in our dreams.

*a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine

October by Eliza Dunn

Today I ran along the river and watched the trees turn color—bright red at the intersection with the church, orange maple trees at the farmhouse, before the bridge falling like snow in a snowglobe. I took a photo of every new shade to show you later so that you can ooh and ahh at all the right times and I can swipe through all seventeen and say here and here and here. We’re twenty-two after all and neither of us knows the next place we’ll call home. Just last night you asked me if I would move to Boston or San Francisco or Chicago if you were there and suddenly there was so much unsaid between us, hovering in the air like leaves. I couldn’t find the right words and anyways it was already too late, and even I don’t understand it—the way that time rivers between bodies. The many tributaries of my life branching out in front of me like veins. But for now we’re here in a place that autumns, as in a place where the river grows cold and gray enough to mirror back the sky at us, as in a place where sap runs slow through tree-bodies and becomes the creemees we get at the farm that Tuesday after class, becomes the syrup I stir into my coffee as we sit on my couch with the windows propped open, legs flung over each other like kids. It’s October and still warm enough to wear t-shirts and for a second the world feels big enough for us and all the ones we might be, someday. It’s still morning. I hold on tight.

Ticking by Illeas Paschalidis

The clock ticked, as
the hour closed, hands, ticking;
she spoke in front of the class, her students
listening, tentatively attentive, but
each was fidgeting, and the boy in the corner,
watched, he watched the clock as it
ticked and he twitched, his leg bouncing up and down,
there was just a minute left and every student had a tick, squirming,
passively, twiddling, they did not think,
nor did the teacher, ticking, twitching,
scratching the inside of her hand as she
taught, rushing to finish before the clock struck one.
Only one had no tick.
The kid who never spoke pulled at his lip,
and the star of the court laid on his desk and so did the
jester—the teacher spoke of a jester who danced and played,
always playing and jumping, good god, why did he jump;
only one student knew:
the one who sat still.
And I sat beside the motionless, rubbing my eye and
scratching my back—it all itched—
but he alone ignored the clock’s
tick, so loud, pounding on the minds of every
person in the room, they all watched the
clock, how could he ignore it?
I wondered—you wonder so much
when minutes last hours, mind races, thinking
about everything, and anything but mainly just how
sitting beside me was silent, still
perfection.
And when the clock struck one, all
stood but he who sat beside me, sitting still, smiling,
clearly not boy, but man, no youth in eyes
that were never lost, never worried, never wandering, never
wondering when the end would come.

Burden by Devin Gifford

Berry-picking birds
twill overhead, launching
with a rustle.
They revel in abundance,
gorge themselves.

Boughs bend,
brimming with bulbous weight.
She is overcome.
Red bursts of berry bounty,
begging you to pick.

Relieve her
of this burden she brought forth
for you.
For you, these berries bloomed.
Rip them free.
Let her be empty again,
weightless,
free to shake wildly in the wind.

She never wanted
to be stunted,
generously hung,
fertile.

As the birds tear
her berries from bough,
she is skinned.
Sloughed of worth,
renewed
for another season.

the taste of memory by Claire Kovac

I stand alone in the rain and watch
as blood jewels on my finger
a perfect ruby sphere

I must have pricked my finger but
strangely I can’t remember

the thought comes unbidden
that it’s because of you

last summer at the field we watched clouds drift
form and reform and I felt unmolded myself

our legs tangled together like the thickets
behind my grandmother’s house
fuzzy leaves and prickled thorns

when we were small
you would make fairy caps of raspberries
laughing as I’d adorn my fingers with them

now I bring my finger to my lips
for a moment I feel certain
it’ll taste of raspberries and memory

instead it tastes like the sea
you were always too afraid of it

On a Friday by Anna Costello

You will reach for an old key
people will be kissing on your doorstep
with playful desperation
you will tease the teeth of metal in your pocket
and look up at the latticed pines,
where the sunlight falls the same way
they want someone’s hand to fall
between their bones, an intercostal
home, their hookup which is
fine, the alcohol which twists them up
like honey, they are doing their best
to encounter life as a perpetual lucid dream
an old key, for a broken lock
that makes you feel safe.

i can't come to the phone right now by Ally Burg

when your phone dies in the middle of a run,
you stumble upon a farmers market
and buy a peach.
you witness two roommates lug a second hand table
through the crowd and hear an elderly man whisper to his wife
“let’s get out of this sea of humanity”
a child begs for an overpriced ice pop and
a vendor hands you a glass of water, free of charge,
because you really look like you could use it.
you eavesdrop about a woman’s baby shower
and friendship breakups and a really aggravating boss.
you find a bus stop but forgot your route
and never really learned how to use a map anyways,
so you ask the dad with the stroller which way to Georgetown.
he teaches you how to read the schedule like he is practicing for the day
his child is old enough to understand maps and farmers markets and bad bosses
and the bus comes and you wave goodbye to the dad and the kid and the driver waves you on,
even as you explain your payment is located on your dead phone.
so you sit down and stare at the cute guy next to you read Catch 22
and out the window for a trace of familiarity.
you spot that ice cream place with all those autographs and presidents and pull the yellow cord
and hop out at the same time as your seatmate.
you wish you were a little less sweaty and flushed
because he reads and has kind eyes and maybe he lives around here
but soon enough you see that pink sandwich shop that signals you’re on your block,
so you turn towards home and away from the bus and the nice boy and you punch in your code,
greeted by your roommate wondering where you had been and whether she should wear the skirt
or the dress and what time you were cooking dinner.

and as you chop up onions with your roommate and
your phone is rightfully placed in the charger,
you decide that when you are old and wrinkled and gray,
with the money and time
to get your produce at the local farmers market,
you won’t mind
this sea of humanity.