GIRLS NIGHT by Elisabet Velasquez
After I gave him my dented hands which in any case were still valuable
in the way that ruins can be,
I leave him for myself.
I spin-drunk en la sala, a spiraling summer,
I talk to my homegirls in the language of tomorrow –
girl, finally. I invite them to die with me
at the club.
I pick a man to wine into, until the dance is an interrogation. The last man was loving me wrong. My
hands crawl close enough to his face to feel his breath the moment right before he regrets me. You know
how ya’ll do, love a girl only when she is the brightest version of her pain. The way a shadow loves the
pavement only when the sun shines. Have you ever been the shadow? I mean have you splayed your body
so flat against a woman that you didn’t notice she was concrete? I dance for him the way worms dance in
honor of devouring a body.
My homegirls laugh until they are ghosts.
- Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized