Elena Ramirez-Gorski

In the café Lennie says he doesn’t have a type

My ex’s dead ex looks just like me

She had a habit of lying in the street and

he fell in love with her in the headlights

of a semi-truck that didn’t kill her

but could have if she decided

the game was over

He says she was fucking crazy

I say I used to play the same game

and he says trust me

you aren’t like her

I don’t say that I understood the pleasure

of wheels rattling my chest

and feeling the weak organ 

jerk awake

He says he doesn’t know

if he’ll ever understand her

I don’t talk about my suspicion that

she and I lived the same life

origami-ed ourselves into the same polite shapes

to seduce the white boy with clean sneakers and baby fat

because there are as many bland boys

looking for manic pixie dream girls

as pill-bitter girls looking for someone

to miss and eulogize them

I ask how the funeral went

He said he wouldn't know

He didn't have the tears

Or the words

So I say take mine

I’ve kept them warm:

          you leaving tore dumb tooth from gum

          you dying ripped blood clot from socket

          now I am all exposed nerve

          you taught me to feel and now

          I’ll never unlearn

Elena Ramirez-Gorski is a Chicana writer from Adrian, Michigan. She is currently an undergraduate at the University of Michigan studying Creative Writing and Literature as well as Latina/o Studies. She has work published in The Acentos Review and forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine.