This looks like the kind of place
a body could wash ashore any morning
and feels like the kind of place it won’t.
If they find my flesh sleeping
into worms and damp mulch, head torn off
like a paper doll, I’d be content, or something like it,
knowing the ocean churns.
I live in a centuries-old house and I am not afraid
of ghosts although the clock does funny things
when I’m not looking. There are other things that surprise me:
how the water smells rancid but not sour,
something salty, dark teal and mystic,
like what lies on a mattress between the shoreline
of her floral dress and Pacific railroad thighs.
How the sound of the ocean is less of a prayer and more the song
that keeps playing over the car radio
after the crash.
There is a reason the moon makes the water move
the way a mother makes her child
obey, just by watching.
There is a reason why the word home is a hallway
that can swallow you for days. Why Amen
means water in every ancient language.
Erin Slaughter grew up in Anna, Texas. After traveling the country alone in a red Kia, she is currently pursuing an MFA at Western Kentucky University. You can find her fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction in River Teeth, Harpoon Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Off the Coast, and GRAVEL, among others. She lives in downtown Bowling Green, KY, with a cat named Amelia.
—Art by So-Ghislaine