Sketchbook

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

You can tell he still loves her
by the way he shades
the muscles of her arm,

careful sketches over rounded flesh.

She left pencil shavings clinging to him,
spider webs grazing the top of his head
woven into unwashed hair.

He looks for her in the morning,
reaches across a cold bed
to trace her outline in head crushed pillow.

Not yet ready to replace these impressions,
or wash her scent from loose sheets.

He pretends he can hold her,
keep her safe,

a green and yellow parakeet
nestled in his palm.

Head twisting back,
sharp black eyes reflect
thick fingers around fragile frame.

He was sure,

despite
the flick of restless glances,

the spit of tears from a cursing tongue,

the hollowness in the cage of her ribs,

she would keep.

So sure

he could reverse rip currents
pump air into languid lungs,

resurrect the broken.

You can tell he still loves her
by the way he won’t catch your eye,

the small tremble in his voice
when he says her name
and looks away.

“Sketchbook” is previously published in The Fall of a Sparrow (2014).

Figs

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

My girlfriend gets drunk
and tells me about the life she almost had,
the man she almost stayed with,
the home she almost created.

She is remembering tonight:

a sweet regression to a time                when there was
more fruit on the tree,

when she had the novelty of choice.

It happens to all of us, doesn’t it?
That regress to younger days and different decisions.

But this was a hard one for her
and the confession of “what if” is
pouring out of her in words mildly slurred
in her high pitch, baby voice
that she only gets when she’s upset.
She keeps saying “I could’ve” as if
any of it mattered.

She is exhausted and broken and vulnerable
and honest and angry and innocent and
so human I can’t help but to love her.

Love her for being able to express and confess
all the lost fruit: the ones that dropped,
the ones that remained out of reach.

There are parts of me that have fallen away,
that I rarely miss, but every now and then
I have a vision of that former life:

a dream or a discombobulated memory
of what might have been                     trips and tricks

before flaking away like the top layer of
skin shed in the sun.

 

“Figs” is previously published in Steel Jackdaw Poetry (2025).

The Forest

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Our crowns lost their jewels
in the last days of October,
scattering red and gold
from heaven to earth
and everywhere in between.

But our heartwood out measures
the sapwood by multitude,
and our trunks have become stable
thick and knotted around midrib.

No longer lean or smooth,

            but sturdy

tough skinned,
holding the nicks and gnashes
of more passing seasons,

the bleaching of the sun,
and the freezing of tips.

The canopies we bloomed
to shade our earth have become
thinner and thinner each year:
patchy,

holes of sunlight break through,

We have become womb to wildlife.
We hold the nest safe
from the reach of prey,
and though our skin may be marked,
tattooed, stretched,
though they contain wounds and rot,
so much more than rind remains.

We remain.

We are not
pathetic creatures,
even if we no longer have
the pliable limbs of our youth

and our leaves no longer
reflourish in the spring.

There is no weakness here
and the twisting to roots
that tangle like serpents
after their own tails and limbs
contorted by patches of decay
create a display of ancient brilliance.

We are true and long lived and wise.
We are radiant.

“The Forest” is previously published in Kelp Journal (2024).