Who I Was with Her

by Nita Tyndall

When I hear that she’s dead, I run.

and it’s the girlfriend part that fills the room but the I guess part that fills me.

If no one recognizes you at your girlfriend’s funeral, were you ever really her girlfriend?

The parking lot is packed with mourners, black-feathered crows come to gawk at the dead girl.

Death does that to teenage girls—makes martyrs out of them, perfect angels with white wings and halos that don’t quite fit.

I am a girl with a secret. (I am a secret.)

Who she was before is buried under a facade of acrylic nails and old booze, and I know I can’t bring her back, but if I am the perfect daughter, maybe I can.