Between amnion & presence, I erased you. A question mark separated & signified. We became syntactical units.

But once, I knew you as earth-toned, dusted on brick walls. LTV steel plants closed, & you cried. Or, I remember you as slag floating on the Cuyahoga. Where did you bubble from? What metal ore was heated to extract you from purity? You smelled acrid and a caustic spike shot through my nose. You pooled an epitaph on my tongue. I spit venom & oxidized girders that modernists claimed would herald a new world order .

We laughed, but not in unison. I echoed you & became a reverberation. You echoed me & stole my voice by wavelengths. But co-opting was your strong suit. Like the summer months when Canadian soldiers crossed Lake Eire , you called them your plague & took to tapping stones with a beggar's rod.

Perch & walleye fought the flowage in search of syringes: that one quick fix: a Sunday homily for hooks & night crawlers & Crisco & frying pans & Midwestern families' acknowledgment that god had blessed them so.

Ohio , yes, I erased you. But please, await my galleons & arteries. My capillaries can barely reach my grandfather's change purse & his last ducats. & he passed years ago. & that rattle was for dime store cavities. & I did not know you heard the chime of currency against car keys or dreamed to slurp processed sugar.

Ohio , your emerald necklace wreathed you in crayfish & water snakes, aphids & fire flies. Drunken deer sick with tics would stagger down your roads. We drew straws to see who would pet their insides, weave their intestines with butter.

There were better ways of growing we were unfamiliar with. Opportunities breathed, then strangled & wheezed. Topsoil. Fingernails. Pinworms. Oatmeal. Speckled skin. Hairless genitals. A pitch destined to kilter & sideways stumble. I know there is more, Ohio ; perhaps, you will remind me.

I miss you. Call me if you get the chance.

J