Erie PA by Trina Michelle Askin

"Get me out of Erie."

I keep having this dream of this heavy turquoise sea
and I am on the sand that is a strange gold
going in this water so that it is all in my mouth.
But I am not drowning and the water tastes rich
like ginger ale and red velvet batter.
And then I look at someone I used to be so in love with,
and say, Look this is the place I have been telling
you about all along until I am sobbing and floating deeper in 
to 30 feet underwater. Still not drowning, still clear speech. 
The sign says Erie, Pa. But all I know of Erie, Pa is a girl 
at the mission retreat who said she was in the holy volunteer corps

because stripping was getting old. Her, Don’t get me wrong;

I love the art of having fun and the Lord blessed me 
with my rocking body wasn’t much better
than my Because I was lonely, I thought the lonely
might love me. She listed motorcycles and
taking candle lit baths with her man as her Sabbath hobbies. 
I met so many on the mission cult circuit that year, but she was 
the only one who offered me home grown potatoes & garlic, 
doo wop 45’s, a black and white TV set from the yard sale.
After the third suicide no one comes back us.
We just remember it as though they do, that they hold us
in a way that would make us live again.