millennial melancholy

Eissa Saeed

all my friends are sad—
 I could pull out my phone
 & read down the list
 I could show you texts
 in which we regularly confess
 the state of our shared
 millennial melancholy

“How’re you?”

“Slowly dying”

“SAME”

all my friends are sad—
 I could say we’re on the mend
 but none of us know
 what to do about it
 though most of us are brave
 some of us are terrified,
 swiping & scrolling,
 in search of a compatible
 interface so we don’t
 have to die alone

“I hate men.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Sigh.”

all my friends are sad—
 I could say we know
 exactly who we are
 I could tell you all
 about the things
 we’re gonna do
 if only we weren’t
 stuck in this
 godforsaken town,
 right where we were
 a decade ago

“I need a vacation”

“Aren’t you broke?”

“Yep”

all my friends are sad—
 I could go on about
 how we won’t ever
 change. Then how
 come I don’t like
 you but I wanna
 be just like you?
 maybe it’s that we
 all crave attention
 not because we want
 eyes on us but only
 because we want
 to know someone’s
 there.

“When will death come?”

“Soon, I hope.”

all my friends are sad.

Eissa Saeed is a poet, screenwriter, and playwright whose work employs communication tactics to create narratives that challenge sociopolitical ideas. His play Home/Sick, centred around a Muslim-American family reconciling with queerness, was shortlisted for the 2018 Theatre503 Playwriting Award. In 2019, Eissa was a Qalambaaz Screenwriting Fellow and developed a feature script titled In His Name. By day, Eissa works as a media strategist at New Heights Communications and also with the UNFPA to promote family planning services in Pakistan. Eissa holds a BA from Bennington College and an MA from the George Washington University.