Month: July 2022

Recovery

/ Katrina Kaye / 2 Comments

Katrina Kaye

This is a moment in
the throes of recovery.

In an attempt to mend,

to collect crushed shells
left to rot on the beach
and form them back together,

to recreate something whole,

I creep on hands and knees across
tousled bed sheets
to where you sit reading a book

and lie my head on your body,
purring into the flesh of your thigh
before sickness reclaims me.

Before I regress,

revert,

relapse,

take it

all

back

in.

In only minutes,
the tide will drag me into
the ocean of broken back.

The heave of stomach
will turn me from your scent.

The blistered,

drained,

bandaged,

will bubble under your supple touch.

But for this moment,

I rest my head upon the circuitry of your body,
listen to your voice read of rabbits and waterships,
your thumb strokes the bone of my cheek,

and count each lick of my body’s fall
and rise.

“Recovery” is previously published in Catching Calliope Vol 2, 2014 and my verse…(2014)..

Poets

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

We are not songbirds;

we are the wild mustangs,
the feral beasts
who thundered across the open.

We beat out passion
with untamed hooves
and scream our songs
like trumpets,

leaving behind broken
larkspur and hoof prints
in the mountain mud.

We do not embrace,
but find familiarity
in our propinquity and
the gentle rubbing of noses.

“Poets” is previously published in September (2014) and somewhere else that I can’t seem to remember.

I dreamt you

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I dreamt you were still alive.

Your death,                         a fabrication,
gossip created by popular media,                   the paparazzi,

to fool the public,
to fool me.

My eyes adjusted to you
like the setting sun.

You were different,
changed,          but I knew you.

A full beard of bristling blonde hair
clung to your cheeks ,
red and chapped from winter’s icy kiss.

Your shoulders,
too broad for emaciated frame
hung clothing loose

as though there was nothing more
than a whisper beneath them.

And your hands,
rough,                          blistered,
like you pulled yourself
one grip over the other
to the surface of the earth.

But your alternate appearance
did not fool me,

I knew you.

Without hesitation I ran,
falling into you,
I folded;           held you.

I felt the sharp thick hairs
of your beard on my forehead,
felt your arms holding me
like a weak memory.

And you knew me
like I knew you,

in that space in our minds
where we are free to embrace
all that we once had.

Where time,
death,              change,
those things can’t hurt us anymore.

I held you there.

“I dreamt you” is previously published in Catching Calliope Vol 3, 2014.