Trina Askin
Lost Nostalgia and How Your Voice Sounded in the Rain
I remember the year I rented a room from the sad opera singer.
But the house had no music, so I rode the metro
at night with the new youth’s trance
that felt like chlorine pool water and snow
all at once going down my lungs.
But somehow it was warm. Somehow, I could see it.
I could see everything. I tried to read the majestic poets,
but none of them knew your name.
I tried to be young, but everything I found beautiful
in that world had to do with drugs.
I remember things like giving you the number to my room
and waiting and waiting until there was nothing
to do but let myself soak in the rain, where I wept
and wept because I was foolish and had no plan for anything.
I only wanted to feel that you and I and the stellar
in the liquid black of sky were of the same skin.
Then later in the night shift of my work,
the Afghani CNA who knew a lot about the real shit
in this life—war and exile survival; a husband and a son
shot in a car by soldiers—told me how good I was
for not having a boyfriend, that I was pure and lovely like a horse.
And the priest who fed me Christ in the chapel,
my morning meal, said my worship was that of a saint,
and that the mission train for Warsaw, Poland
would be leaving Friday. But every city seemed so cold
and unimaginable without being able to run into you.
I was selfish as hell, though everyone thought
I carried the Lord’s heart because that is what it was
to be so devoted to your beauty. I remember
you were twenty years older than me and every new wave-
moody song on the radio was a swell in my heart--
a year that you had gone on living and I was too young
to touch you. You looked so good in yellow and red rugby--
your husband’s faded jersey. You were every good
and romantic notion I had about 1983.
The year I still sucked at the milk of my mother.
The year I waded in the innertube of the bathing pool--
my father not yet cruel but tenderly washing me.
There was a lullaby he sang to some new wave synth hit,
over and over, and it stayed within my veins even years later,
wandering those same row-homes faded from bronze to tan
and graffiti wetted by drizzle dripping off sycamores
onto the rusted metal of a broken carousel.
And this is where you live—the wondrous world
I opened my eyes to at the smallness of a child.
And sometimes you would let me in. The only place
I ever wanted to know. I must have been remembering you
from a long time ago. I must have remembered your voice
being let in through the screen with the feather tip
of a robin’s wing and the damp breath of that hazel autumn.
I must have remembered you singing.
But the house had no music, so I rode the metro
at night with the new youth’s trance
that felt like chlorine pool water and snow
all at once going down my lungs.
But somehow it was warm. Somehow, I could see it.
I could see everything. I tried to read the majestic poets,
but none of them knew your name.
I tried to be young, but everything I found beautiful
in that world had to do with drugs.
I remember things like giving you the number to my room
and waiting and waiting until there was nothing
to do but let myself soak in the rain, where I wept
and wept because I was foolish and had no plan for anything.
I only wanted to feel that you and I and the stellar
in the liquid black of sky were of the same skin.
Then later in the night shift of my work,
the Afghani CNA who knew a lot about the real shit
in this life—war and exile survival; a husband and a son
shot in a car by soldiers—told me how good I was
for not having a boyfriend, that I was pure and lovely like a horse.
And the priest who fed me Christ in the chapel,
my morning meal, said my worship was that of a saint,
and that the mission train for Warsaw, Poland
would be leaving Friday. But every city seemed so cold
and unimaginable without being able to run into you.
I was selfish as hell, though everyone thought
I carried the Lord’s heart because that is what it was
to be so devoted to your beauty. I remember
you were twenty years older than me and every new wave-
moody song on the radio was a swell in my heart--
a year that you had gone on living and I was too young
to touch you. You looked so good in yellow and red rugby--
your husband’s faded jersey. You were every good
and romantic notion I had about 1983.
The year I still sucked at the milk of my mother.
The year I waded in the innertube of the bathing pool--
my father not yet cruel but tenderly washing me.
There was a lullaby he sang to some new wave synth hit,
over and over, and it stayed within my veins even years later,
wandering those same row-homes faded from bronze to tan
and graffiti wetted by drizzle dripping off sycamores
onto the rusted metal of a broken carousel.
And this is where you live—the wondrous world
I opened my eyes to at the smallness of a child.
And sometimes you would let me in. The only place
I ever wanted to know. I must have been remembering you
from a long time ago. I must have remembered your voice
being let in through the screen with the feather tip
of a robin’s wing and the damp breath of that hazel autumn.
I must have remembered you singing.
Biography
Trina Askin's poetry and fiction have appeared in Trampset, GNU Journal, Qu, Voices of Eve, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Meadow, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Her work has also been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Northern Virginia.
