A List of Grievances

A List of Grievances by Olivia Muenz
  1. I do not have any kittens

  2. My government hates me

  3. My car is full of mold

  4. Sometimes it is too loud outside for me to sleep

  5. Sometimes it is too hot inside for me to sleep

  6. Sometimes it is too too for me to sleep

  7. I am always tired and I don’t like it

  8. I am always tired and I don’t like it and everyone thinks my tired is their tired but their tired is not my tired their tired is regular is human and I am a monster

  9. I do not read and that is someone’s fault (not mine)

  10. No one will wear cloth on their face so that I can continue being

  11. Flowers die (should be permanent)

  12. I don’t understand how cars work

  13. I am losing my health insurance and so I may die

  14. My employer does not seem interested in the narrative that I may lose my health insurance and so I may die

  15. Olives

  16. My best friend has cancer and so does her mom and so did her dad but now he is dead and that doesn’t seem fair

  17. I don’t have object permanence

  18. I don’t have permanence

  19. Everyone is very annoying except me

  20. I am the most annoying

  21. My boyfriend never remembers the phone number for the emergency line at his endocrinologist’s office so when his insulin pump breaks we have to go the emergency room which costs him one billion dollars and then I get very sick and then he gets very sick and then we move back and forth into and out of each other in sickness until we’re unable to tell one sick part from another sick part until we’re smothered in sick until we die

  22. I want to be a writer but I can never write and that seems unfair

  23. My ex-boyfriend was not very nice to me and now he makes more money than me

  24. My other ex-boyfriend (who is nice) is a doctor and now I am dating a writer

  25. I talk very quiet and no one can hear me especially my boyfriend who is 70% deaf

  26. My mom is very loud and now she is also 70% deaf and is even louder

  27. My mom and my boyfriend will not press their ears to one another

  28. I am heat intolerant and I live in the South

  29. I am from New York and I live in the South

  30. I do not have any money and that doesn’t seem fair

  31. I cannot afford to go to any doctors and that doesn’t seem fair

  32. I am a disabled woman in America and that doesn’t seem fair

  33. I live in America and I believe in the concept of fairness

  34. Kittens become cats no exceptions

  35. My cat will die before me and that doesn’t seem fair

Olivia Muenz holds an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she earned the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award in prose and served as an editor for New Delta Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Salt Hill Journal, Anomaly, Denver Quarterly's F I V E S, The Boiler, and elsewhere. She currently teaches at Louisiana State University. Find her online at oliviamuenz.com