Growing Up, I Had Recurring Dreams of Leaving Forest Lake

after Matt Mitchell

It wasn’t until I left & came back like a field
of perennial flowers after a long winter that I 
understood what it meant to exist as a ghost 
to people I’d known as if we didn’t all 
ditch class & sit under the same rusty bleachers 
searching for ways to believe in fragility
& I never learned to double kickflip, but lied
when I said I had to gain cred with the punks
who taught me to mosh & pray for an ending
of hands reaching in, plucking bodies 
off the dance floor back from the dead. I know 
people mostly leave & also eventually 
come back which may have to do with soil
& what we bury in silence or 
bloody shirts stained pink from split lips, 
tossed in the wash. At a bar outside Forest Lake 
guys I once knew gather around pitchers              
of Premium to watch the Vikings & cheer              
when they score, cursing anyone who talks               
during the kicks. We all remember 
when Gary Anderson missed that field goal 
in ‘98 & are quick to relive what it means 
to be a broken window in a bed of flowers; 
how it takes an instant to disappear.

Steve Merino is a meat raffle host, a zamboni driver, and a poet living in Saint Paul, MN. He received his MFA from Hamline University in 2019. Steve's previous work can be found in Ghost City Review, Oyster River Pages, and Shark Reef and is forthcoming to You Flower / You Feast. Find him liking posts on twitter: @steve_merino