Chasing Rabbits

Sketchbook

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

You can tell he still loves her
by the way he shades
the muscles of her arm,

careful sketches over rounded flesh.

She left pencil shavings clinging to him,
spider webs grazing the top of his head
woven into unwashed hair.

He looks for her in the morning,
reaches across a cold bed
to trace her outline in head crushed pillow.

Not yet ready to replace these impressions,
or wash her scent from loose sheets.

He pretends he can hold her,
keep her safe,

a green and yellow parakeet
nestled in his palm.

Head twisting back,
sharp black eyes reflect
thick fingers around fragile frame.

He was sure,

despite
the flick of restless glances,

the spit of tears from a cursing tongue,

the hollowness in the cage of her ribs,

she would keep.

So sure

he could reverse rip currents
pump air into languid lungs,

resurrect the broken.

You can tell he still loves her
by the way he won’t catch your eye,

the small tremble in his voice
when he says her name
and looks away.

“Sketchbook” is previously published in The Fall of a Sparrow (2014).

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).

On My Own

/ Katrina Kaye / Leave a comment

Katrina Kaye

I

In front of the iron gates around my apartment,
the only shadows which move
are people passing through open doors.

II

I was in search for the peace your arms gave
like a home prematurely tornado torn from me.
I was in search of hands that mimicked your genius
and eyes like the little boy who traced my lifelines.

III

The first one swept me in a whirlwind of autumn leaves
and I spent the fall in a pantomime of satisfaction.

IV

A man and a woman
can stay warm on a November night.
A man and a woman and another woman
are the heat running out on a December morning.

V

I do not know which to prefer:
the sweet lies of a memory
or the blue eyes of the bartender.
The bed heated by his hunger
or the emptiness just after.

VI

Icicles hang abandoned
dripping in the April sun.
The shadow of a man
who healed my wounds
crossed it, to and fro.
The setting,
redeemed by the shades,
prepared me for a new spring.

VII

The thin man of my summer
preferred golden birds to shy sparrows
But that didn’t stop him
for taking two years with tender feet,
allowing a momentary blindness
by chestnut feathers.

VIII

I have always been a sucker for accents
and long fingers plucking strings;
I know, too,
that difference of enchantment and truth,
but I sometimes fall victim to enchantment.

IX

When the third blue eyed boy flew out of sight,
days after winter solstice,
I had not found the imprint of you.
I stopped retracing flight patterns.

X

I release myself in my past
reflecting on silly lovers and unreal expectations
allowing the idea of home to unravel.

You took the only home I’d ever know with you
on a September morning when the train pulled from station.

XI

When we were both 24
you rode over the state line
for a weekend visit,
but a fear pierced you,
and you fell asleep in hotel room
leaving me waiting alone at window table
watching birds perch on telephone wires.

It was the last time I heard from you.

XII

My mouth cannot hold on to bitterness
but it does not retain hope either.

XIII

Evening crept into afternoon.
I lounge in solidarity.
I no longer look for home
in the cracked shells of the past.