Maria Laura Mendes makes me happy by writing so sadly

When I was in my early twenties, I liked to walk long distances listening to a Sony Discman. The little device knew by heart the CD that Damien Rice had released in that period. The album is still scandalously beautiful, it changes the rotation of my earth. I feel sad, wanting to cry on a lit, expensive stage.

Once, upon arriving at my internship, a newsroom colleague, with great confidence and with reason to have it, took off my headphones and found out what was playing. It was the passage of “Eskimo” in which a soprano bursts in along with the orchestra’s swell. I heard these words:

—Good grief, kid! Don’t listen to that! You have to listen to some sertanejo!

I don’t, no. A few days ago, I liked the definition, I heard about that genre as “that abject thing.” I listen to MC Bin Laden, but I don’t listen to sertanejo. I listen to Anitta, but I don’t listen to sertanejo. Billie Eilish, Pabllo Vittar, Mandioquinha and Clarisse, not sertanejo.

I would rather die asking for a glass of water than read Augusto Cury.

Maria Laura Mendes

Life brought me the text of a poet who is less than half my age. And to her I handed the heart of my youth, resentful of love. Introduced by Maku Almeida, Maria Laura Mendes. She intends to release her first book this second semester. And she allows this excerpt to Lab Journalism 2050.

[An excerpt from the poet’s unpublished first book appears in the Portuguese version; it is not reproduced here.]