You Look Like My Ex’s New Girlfriend
By Lauren Fanelli Teague
When you look at me with your green, cat eyes I cannot help but think of life vests,
the way I want to plunge myself into the Arctic, to stop my heart, just for a moment, long enough
to remember its care is not permanent, long enough to remember that a heart broken is only
as good as its shadow. Did you say your name was Maya? Or was it, Lena? Or was it, Naim?
No matter—whatever it is you are no better than me. I know this because we both love
the same man. Well, not you, but the other you that kisses and cleans dishes and shits
with the lights off in a Brooklyn apartment trying too hard to be hospitable, trying to impress
your disdain for excess, that hole in your hallway intentional, some mixed media installation
entitled RAGE. I apologize—you have nothing to do with this, and I don’t mean to stare, but I am
studying the cartography of your chin, the blunt bangs like seventies fringe, teeth that look
conspicuously clean. Do you want to hear my dream? Once upon a time we were both drowning
and he chose to save me, his body cutting through water clean as a missile while your lungs filled
with giddy tides. Am I a monster? It’s just that the past is precarious like an avalanche, like a
natural disaster splitting the earth in two. I may as well tell you that we are still lovers, I may
as well tell you our love is a sudden storm surge, a kind of irredeemable burning. I know
I should think of you, sitting in your secondhand chair while he shudders on the other end of my
line, but I. Am. Not. That. Kind. Of. Girl. Let me be obtuse: loving him was like sleeping
with the sun. I walked away unrecognizable, thin as gold leaf, skin peeling in ribbons of char.
I was breathless. I was calling to the mountain in echoes. My desire was a swarm of sparrows
flapping their black bodies against the wind. I guess what I am asking is if the wind ever answers
your harried calls, if you’ve managed to keep your own meat? Naim: do you ever dream in color?
About the Author
Lauren Fanelli Teague is a writing and literature professor at Rutgers University. Her work has appeared in such publications as Barrow Street, the New York Quarterly, Seneca Review, Diner, and Phoebe, among others. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, two daughters, and their very lazy dog, Olive.
