Episode 02: “Doing Donuts in an ’87 Mustang 5.0, After My Homie Chris Gets Broken Up With” - Michael Torres

“Doing Donuts in an ’87 Mustang 5.0, After My Homie Chris Gets Broken Up With” was first published in The Offing, October 2019. For more of Michael Torres’s work, visit michaeltorreswriter.com.

Doing Donuts in an ’87 Mustang 5.0, After My Homie Chris Gets Broken Up With

I want to argue for the stars but I find them missing
through this window splattered with mud. Tonight,
I sit shotty and do not ask Chris if he’s okay. This is
the kind of loyalty I know—how the Mustang
makes eights across a soccer field. I run my hand
over pennies Pepsi-ed to the center console. That photo
of his ex still blocks the speedometer and the next
few years of his life have already begun to carve
a cave. I pluck pennies into my palm. It doesn’t
take long for this story to burn through the field.
The safety belt shocks my collar. Chris turns and aims
for a gate without easing off the gas. I yell Fuck it
to whatever I can’t hear him say. And isn’t that why
I’m here?—to watch chain-links swell in his headlights.
I disappear the pennies with my fist.