Katrina Kaye

I emerge from the darkness of my underworld
carrying a lantern and a handful of sunflowers.

In my back pocket are all the poems that have ever touched my heart;
in my boot a hidden twenty-dollar bill for emergencies.

Wrapped around me is every piece of advice my mother ever gave me
and every life lesson she never realized she impressed upon me.

I carry the music of Mozart humming in my throat
and the rare, honest smile of my brother in my memory.

I carry the good and the bad, the ashes of my fire and the hope for better,
a wooden box of mementos from the people I once knew and once knew me.

I carry the acceptance for what I cannot change
and a stubborn hope to change what I can.

I carry everything and nothing.
My hands remain forever empty and open.

Katrina Kaye

sometimes I don’t recognize my reflection
you might take that as metaphor

                        but it’s not

and someday it will happen to you

change is unavoidable
time catches up to us all

                        eventually

transforming the shape of our features
pressing what was into what is
illuminating a spot or deepening a crease

it happens a little each day
until at some point you find yourself
seeing a stranger in the mirror

and thinking

                        what is it I have become?