Katrina Kaye

The echo of our time together
still reeks of musty clothes and walks in the rain.

Aware of the tick of the tock,
I hastily wrote my lyrics all over your body,
unfinished tattoos of snarling dragons
and long haired beauties.

We were starving then,
misfit and broken,
so desperate on these feet
which knew only how to sink in sand.

The snap of your smile
was enough to unknot
the tiny hairs around my neck.
The ink of your iris
left my door unlocked
for the chance you
needed a comfort to crawl in.

You were my favorite stanza
of a strange poem
birthed over bed sheets and smiling moons.

I was so careful
not to use the word forever.

After you slipped out,
I spent the afternoon
looking for scissors to clip
this moment clean.

Instead I found ribbons of your
Wednesday night verses,
the imprinted entanglement of your arms,
the scrawl of your breath
against shoulder blade,
the residual whisper:

This
is all there is.

Just you,
just me,

just this.

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