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).

Lullaby

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

the past plays wind instruments
outside bedroom window
a lullaby from a childhood
that slipped by too fast

it’s a tune that has gone unheard
for decades, yet you seem to know
the arrangement of notes
and can anticipate the changing pitch

what melody does the present
sound like other than static
from the television
left on across the room

there is no rush to end the lullaby
it is not the numbed silence from the stillness
of strings and quietude of auditorium we want
but the continuance of the melody

how can we hear the song
when the present is a distracting buzz
when the future is blaring its inevitability
so loud it rattles the windows

this song isn’t urgent to finish
but to be heard as it crests and crescendos
across the bedroom from east facing window
illuminating the dust that sways through stale air

“Lullaby” is previously published in No Longer Water (2024).