Reminiscence

Seventeen Years

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

In my dream you were alive.

I saw you:

a broken man with crooked smile
telling me it’s been seventeen years.
You’ve been looking for me for
seventeen years. You’ve been in love
with me for seventeen years.

It’s been seventeen years since
your spine cracked upon impact.
It was just one of those things that happen,

an accident.

No one’s fault;

No one to shoulder the blame.

It has been seventeen years since we
raced the halls together. A good kid
who smiled too much. A chip of broken tile
and notes passed by girls. You never should
have become a name smeared to highway.
Never should have been anything more than

a fond memory,

a high school crush,

an old alliance,

a childhood friend.

Now, you survive in the pit of my stomach,
and despite a promise of pleasant reminiscence,
the dream shifts to the crack of skeleton,
the shattering of front tooth.

I can’t trade this image
for a kinder one. It haunts me.

For seventeen years,

it haunts me still.

More than anything,

I want to find you, to call you,
to write you a message in my
sloppy script assuring you
some things never die. But
you are already lost to me.

This is how I wake, chasing
rabbits and trailing sparrows. At
a loss for what I cannot quite
reach. You were always the illusive
one. So I lay here and I endure and
it is as sweet as the Sunday morning
we never shared.

“Seventeen Years” is previously published in Anvil Tongue (2022) and MockingOwl Roost (2022).

Burnt

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

There was a time
when every kiss
was burnt into
the inside of my
wrist – a parade
of lovers notched
up the side of
right arm. Your name
is still scrawled
in cursive on forearm,
the tender spot
where the sun
never reaches.

To the ex lover I ran into at the bar,

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I don’t remember your stomach
hanging over the lip of your jeans
as it does as you lean against counter top.

The smile you toss at the pretty
waitress is all sugar and desperation.
And your posture lacks the presence
it had when you stood by my side.

When we were drunk
making out on the hood of my car,
I didn’t realize I was just another
stop on your list for the night
or that all those honeyed words
had already been practiced
on a hundred different ears.

All the glory of your charm
has become childish with the
fading of infatuation.

There are some lovers whose image
remains uncharred along the blueprints of my mind.
Former eyes singed an unyielding blue,
firm abdomen inflected with beads of sweat.
I have the tendency to web the bodies of past loves
with the glory of the ancients.

But yours I watch in slow decline,
and wonder if your hips were that slim when
I wrapped my legs around them.
If the frailty which kept arms at your sides,
was the same weakness of tongue
that kept you from answering my call.

It is only fair that you share the same
somber realization as mine.

I wonder when you look at me are you
seeing the scars for the first time,
has the scent washed from my hair,
the shine from my reflection?

I refuse to wonder how I transformed under the sobriety
of your gaze. Instead, I remember your hands.

Your fingers, long and graceful, like a woman’s.
There is an undeniable beauty in their elegance,
in the simplicity of manicured nails and subtle skin.

“To the ex lover I ran into at the bar,” is previously published in Dear Booze (2022).