Guarascio

Cut Away

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

My aunt’s breasts did not murder her.
But they fell,                     one by one,
overripe fruit.
I remember she said
once they were gone,
she didn’t feel much like a woman
anymore.

After the first surgery
she showed us her stitched skin.
The higher part bronzed from summer sun,
roughly stapled to once upper abdominal white.

She had no nipples.
It was a graceless realization.
She would eventually have picturesque replicas tattooed on.
Eventually implants would replace the smooth boy chest.
Desperate to become woman again.

It was the curve of my mother’s hips
that lead to her betrayal.
A wanton child nestled in uterus waiting
impatiently to spread,
to creep into belly,
to stretch into tubes and ovary,
submerge in blood.

Sound waves revealed a tumor
embedded in endometrial lining.
I recall the subtle understanding:
sonograms are not just for spying
unborn children.

The surgeons left a scar 
where womb was pulled from body.
Similar to a caesarian incision,
only, somehow, deeper.

These parts,
breast, uterus,
methodically removed,
the woman cut from our beings.
Never knowing how much
they would be missed
until they were gone.

What offense deemed us unworthy
of these precious female features?
The landscape, gifted without asking,
now taken despite pleas.
This anatomy that defined us women,
what is left when it is gone?

Was it the deep throaty
voice of my aunt that frightened
the feminine away?

Were my mother’s hands
too masculine to hold a
womb any longer?

Will I pay for the sins
of a barren belly and one
too many late nights
matching pints with the boys by having
the female raped from my body
with cold scalpel and surgical staples?

The women of my family
are blessed with beautiful breasts,
curved hips, and a predisposition of cancer.

We women of shared blood,
of mirrored images and reflective habits,
who can’t quite quit cigarettes,
who have a weakness for men who drink too much,
who are so giving of our time,
our lives, our flesh,
we still miss these parts that are cut away.

 

“Cut Away” was previously published in Treehouse Arts  (2019).

 

Comrades

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

When I was fourteen,
I curled in the darkness of the downstairs den
to watch hours of coverage over
the suicide of Kurt Cobain.

You know the story.
Shotgun to the head, metal in mouth,
eyes squeezed shut.

Lips chapped with theories.
They blamed at his wife,
his life, his notes, his moods,
his success, the drugs in his blood,
the lines of suicide note.
Hungry for justification.

Of course it was suicide.

Those of us licked by black feathers
under the skin understand.
We who have traveled
the dark waves of ebbing depression,
we know.

When Estrella took too many pills
last summer, the kids at school said it
was to get attention,
that she was a drama queen who
missed her cue.

Her act was selfish,
a little too much teen angst,
she didn’t deserve the tears,
the pity, the memorials.

But I knew her.

Have you ever stared at the kitchen knife in the sink,
wiped it clean of rinds and grease and imagined
how easy it would slip into your belly?

Have you counted the pills in the container,
letting them drop, one by one by one,
into the orange plastic just to see if there were enough?

Have you felt a tremble rush through your hands
as you held the weight of pistol, shotgun, revolver
the chill of the metal reminding you
just how simple, how quick?

Then you could accept this loss without question,
recognize a suffering embedded in the webbing
of circuitry and nervous habits.

We are silent soldiers,
comrades lined along the same front,
painting our face and donning our camouflage.
Every day we wade into battle
our enemy, unseen and indestructible,
all we can do is suspend the inevitable.

When I learned Tommy hung himself,
my reaction was closer to relief than surprise.
Elena was already brain dead by the time
they revived her, a beating heart cadaver they
harvested to save the lives of others.
The weeks after Nathaniel shot himself in the head
I thought of nothing but the white teeth of his smile.

Patrick left the needle hanging from his arm,
Greggory used his .45,
Amanda bled herself dry.
There is still a single .22 caliber bullet
rattling around in my stepfather’s skull.

It is not a whim,
more than a momentary loss of reason.
It is a lifetime of guilt, shame, and sadness
pressed into a tight ball in the gut.

If you’ve never felt this way it is easy
to negotiate conspiracy theories,
it is easy to doubt, to dismiss.

But for the rest of us,
all we can do is sit in silence,
knowing another comrade lost his war.

“Comrades” is previously published in #TrueStory 2015.

Wine Glass

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I position
his arms around
my body
so they hold me
like you used to
when we wedged
into the twin bed
in your basement studio
all those years ago.
I needed only to have
you beside me again,
to cure the cramp
in my gut and the crackle
in my throat with the comfort
of warm body and perfect embrace.

You are gone,
so I use him.

A restless boy with too
much to prove, who has your
height but not your eyes,
who makes me laugh like you
once did and likes to watch
me when I am looking away
so close to your sideways glance.

I shatter myself into him.
Being useless in this skin,
I sought the soul beneath.

It only broke
my heart a little
when he left,
no more than a wine glass
forgotten on the floor
crushed under the klutz
of an early morning
stumble toward bath.

“Wine Glass” is previously published in September (2014).