Katrina Kaye

There is not always

a strategy to my
arrangement of words.

There is merely the

spitting of cracked
glass or creased brow.

It took a nineteen year
old girl to point out

how many poems I write
about a man I loved

being in love
with someone else.

She asked me if it

was one man or several.
I told her I didn’t know.

I didn’t tell her about

the man I bailed out of jail
to drop off at his lover’s house.

I didn’t tell her about

the alcoholic and the pock marked
poems against upper thigh.

I didn’t tell her about

you and the words that never came
when I need them most.

I didn’t tell her how

a little rain never hurt,
and despite time and distance,

my heart still beats
like a stamped of horses.

The poems I write
are rarely scribbled in

mourning or heartbreak

but in the experience
of survival and continuance.

I tell her she’ll understand

someday how some words are
better unsaid, some questions

should not be asked, and poetry

should be allowed to just be.