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.