How to Explain to Your Ex Why Their X-Ray’s Your Desktop by Margaryta Golovchenko

Her mother named her White Dahlia, the consequence
of unplanned pregnancy while studying forensics. Or so

she told the boy selling orchids in popcorn bags (he ran out
of sheet music and poetry books). Renaming her Orchid
he’d ram into her all night so their breathing would fog up the
windows, an eternal 21C. A common misconception:

flowers have no bones. He learned what it means to
have a backbone when she broke his fangs
like sugar cubes.

A glass slide is too small a coffin for one convinced she
was “beloved”. The strawberry cigarette ash
should have been the tip-off. Rarely
will a botanist throw their own child under Industry’s wheels.

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About the author:

Margaryta Golovchenko is an emerging poet from Toronto, Canada, and currently a high school student. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Teacup Trail, The Casserole, and In/Words, among others. She’s a proud bibliophile and when she’s not maneuvering around her mountain of to-be-read books she shares her (mis)adventures on Twitter here.