I work in admissions upstairs. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Sure, I have the final say as to who enters the gates and who is turned away. But it’s more paperwork than you’d think.

Every now and then a case pops up on my desk that gives me pause. What you are about to read is a window into my evaluation of souls. Souls just like yours.

***

Your sense of place remained pitifully underdeveloped all your life. You hated your hometown and averted your eyes from what it had to offer. A 15-minute drive east frightened you. You allowed the destination to determine everything—to wander would be antithetical to how you moved through the world. You mined the data for horror stories and worst-case scenarios. Your methods were ahistorical. You weren’t mindful of the scars redlining and deindustrialization inflicted upon American urban centers. You believed in the fear. You parroted too many right-wing talking points about the uptick in crime. You confused suburbia with community. DENIED.

You failed your driver’s test and we all shared the road with you anyway. Your blinker wasn’t broken, but you sure did act like it. Red lights were recommendations, rather than Surgeon General warnings slapped across your pack of choice. Your behavior behind the wheel was erratic, yet predictable, by algorithm and by intuition. You inspired “hang time,” the two or three seconds more responsible motorists wait after the red becomes green. You sped by and we heard you crash a few seconds later.We stopped to make sure you were okay. You T-boned my mother’s paid-off Lexus on her way to work. DENIED.

You projected vanity onto her every move. You only ever saw her through screens, and maybe once in passing. She was on the phone. Your hunch gave way to hatred—of self, mostly.You refreshed and refreshed for clues, collecting insecurities instead. There existed a great irony in the way you watched. You yourself knew what it is to be watched. Somewhere along the line, she became someone else, but the sentiment stayed the same. You resented her for the attention she commanded. You revealed your presence to her once, on accident. You were the reason she locked up her life. APPROVED.

You mythologized your eating habits long after it was age-appropriate. Admittedly, you’re not special for doing so. You hailed from a Special K-Yoplait household, and for that, you shirked the blame. Life was supposed to be about identifying cycles and breaking the ones that don’t serve you, but it was ultimately easier said than done. You grabbed onto a belief that deprivation was some divine decree and refused to let go. You owed it to your mother to hold hunger at a distance and lick your fingers one at a time. You Doordashed after dinner to rectify your daily caloric deficit. But I see here that you always tipped 20%. APPROVED.

You ordered it on occasion, usually drunk or high or a precarious hybrid of the two. You were living the whitest of a lie, the reality of which rested between you and me and the toilet.You thought it made you more interesting, in-control-seeming. But those grease-lipped early mornings were something it made sense to cherish. You couldn’t stand your own indulgence and that is how it turned into a secret. You pretended to be moved, which plays worse than being unmoved entirely. It wasn’t the cheeseburger that posed the problem, it was your repudiation of self. Has been all along. DENIED.

You found endings impossible to accept. It was hard to pick a favorite first date out of all of them. You didn’t understand why all good things must come to a catastrophic conclusion. You struggled to solve the Rubik’s Cube, to exit the labyrinth, to put yourself to bed at the end of the night. Nostalgia misfit was at the heart of it. You coveted the version of yourself who thought this might be worth the risk. You didn’t want to be known all the way, just moderately fixated over. Attention runs out but love doesn’t have to. You plugged your ears the first time you heard that. APPROVED.

Photographed by Christiaan van Heijst

Written by Kennedy Morganfield