David Lee Roth is still alive. So, not him.
Misshapen strawberries—
          ones like clumps of mud and small fists of children and the knot
           that erupted on my forehead when my baby sitter’s son hit me with a rock.
Every dead bartender.
Love letters I’ve written then torn into pieces.
Sea foam that collects rogue kelp branches and shattered flecks of plastic.
The man who invented baseball isn’t, but his wife is.
Despite what you think, Edgar Allan Poe is there.
          His soul full of thick-throated hymns.
The night I kissed Todd Rader during the Winchester Street Fair behind The Scrambler.
          Kids moving at neck-breaking speeds: me, too.
          October breeze drunkenly singing: me, too.
My first iPhone,       my first dog,       my first poem,
my first period,       my first husband and the morning I woke up knowing I had to leave him.
The peony bush in my dad’s back yard,
his climbing rose near his porch,
his house that burnt down the summer before my senior year.
My dad — my dad is there.
The last text message I sent my first husband,
           not knowing he was dead on his bathroom floor.

When it comes to this, who keeps score?

Erica Anderson-Senter writes from Fort Wayne, IN. Her first full length collection of poetry, Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism, was published by EastOver Press in 2021. Her work has also appeared in ballast journal, Dialogist, Swing Magazine, and Brawl Lit. She has her MFA from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College.