Author: Katrina Kaye

Iphigenia

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I am your sacrifice,
the daughter whose blood can gift you home.

A unwinding of fate,

another snipped thread,
not quite golden.

You promised me a warrior’s bed
but delivered only spilt blood, knife to throat.

Your most sacred of lambs.

It is easy to give up what you never wanted;
what you never saw as your own.

I was your daughter,
I was not born merely to burn.
I hatched to spread wings.

Did you always see me as just another pawn,

a toy,

a golden coin,

not even your most precious?

My death secured your travel,
your destination now foreseeable,
but not what greets you upon your home shore.

I am helpless to your maneuvers above high waters,

but my mother is not so forgiving

and she waits,

axe in hand.

Forgive

/ Katrina Kaye / Leave a comment

Katrina Kaye

Forgive the light from streetlamp that sinks
into the wet streets on Tuesday morning.

Forgive the words that are shared,
smeared, are cut up and divided out.

Forgive how clumsy your smile caught me
how fingers and shadows make excellent shows against cave wall.

Forgive the cave, the loneliness of it
and the isolation, the cruelty.

Don’t abandon my memory upon the rocks and
leave it for the dogs to dig up.

Forgive.

It is the only way to
find your way back.

It is the only way to learn better,
to see better, to love better, to be better.

I watch the rain and remember once believing
birds couldn’t fly when wet.

I know better now.

Midwinter

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

The chill of the months

are known to stagnate
feet and freeze fingers.

Anticipate the cold and lonesome.
Pain clenches fists
in a grotesque coil.
It knows where to find you.

But here is not where it ends.

Come May the sun will
lighten chestnut locks
and brown the pale skin of under arm.

If you are lucky, and I know
you are, you will be able
to watch sunrise over ocean
and know this world will continue.

As the earth spins,
You are a child twirling
in the sunlight until your
knees give out.

Look toward the sea and sunshine.
I know not everyone will see it,
but you will. It will return.

For right now,
listen,
The crash of waves,
the curl of toes against sand,
sunlight reflected in unkempt hair.
they are here
only for you.

“Midwinter” is previously published in W.E.I.R.D. (2022).