Katrina K Guarascio

Rain

/ Katrina Kaye / Leave a comment

Katrina Kaye

I wake at 2:37am
Tuesday morning,
all knees and elbows
reveling in the sound
of your late summer storm.
I feel that clap of thunder
in my hipbones,
inhale the flash of light
in the cage that holds
my impatient heart.

I’m thinking of how it might feel
to have you next to me in this downpour.
Your hands on my body
displayed in the night’s electricity.
The rhythm of you
like sheets of hail beating my skin.

I conjure,
at 2:37am,
your moisture spreading
along the line of my clavicle,
your thumbs dripping into the
flesh of my thighs.

I imagine your violence
drenching me,
spit and splash as I
soak into you.
You collect my hair,
moist from your shower,
sweep it from my body,
revealing soft flesh underneath.
The condensation of your lips
caress the back of my neck,
fingers tap ripples against my spine,
something about the rain at 2:37am.

The storm doesn’t hold back.
It is unleashed, wild and primitive,
and I picture the rise and fall,
the beat of you,
the growl and flash,
reflected in hungry gestures
before you move on,
leaving remnants of your tempest
dripping from my window ledge.

“Rain” is previously published in The Fall of a Sparrow (2014) and as a performance piece on Youtube from the 2012 ABQ Indie City Poetry Slam Championship.

Your Ghost

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

When I wake
your ghost is sitting
on the bedroom window sill.
The one the dog chewed through
that we never got around to fixing.

She plucks teeth marks with pale fingers,
glancing through the corners of eyes
pretending not to follow my movements.

She watches me rise,
and I resist the urge to tell her to look away
as I slip into robe and socks.

The last time I asked her to make me some coffee,
her face blackened to sorrow before she faded away.

I do not ask her for anything anymore.

Your ghost does not frighten me.
I am not the least bit startled when I see her
passing me in the hall,
drinking from the carton,
laying on the couch in the dim of morning.

I catch her staring a little too long,
stainless gray iris reflecting my face.
Unconditional patience woven
into the tangle of veins in the length of her reach,
wanting nothing more than the
contentment of touch.

She does not glare at the Spanish moss
webbed from regrets that hang
along my limbs.

She does not acknowledge
the crust of contrition
I have manifested inside
the lines of my face.
She sees me precious, unsullied,
as she promised she always would.

As an act of atonement,
an apology for my life after your death,
an attempt to weave back into you,
I’ve wrapped your ghost
around my body like loose ribbons,

desperate
to recreate your arms snaked around me,
to feel your exhale on the crook of my neck,
to taste the pulp of your skin with the plum of lip,

wanting nothing more
than the contentment
of touch.

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

Frailty

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I can’t stand to watch you drop another glass,
so we toast a drink over the telephone.

You balance confession with comfort
while I stroke blemish on canvas,
eager to portray your anticipated resurrection.

Her pictures are pinned on the tile
around your medicine cabinet mirror.
As we speak I feel you stare,
absently hoping arms will emerge
from polished slate to touch you again.

You ask me what I know about human frailty.
I remind you of the bite on my neck
and the fingerprints on my hipbone.

It’s good I don’t bruise easily.

We sing “Sunday Morning”
across the wire in the recording studio
of your too small bathroom.
You say it’s because you sound
best in the shower,

but I know you prefer her face
against the reflection of my voice.

Puzzling our portrait together,
squares ill fit and fragmented,
I tried to capture my place along your side,
but the colors smear before they dry.

Last Thursday you scribed a poem
on the back of my thigh
and the skin still reddens where you stabbed your vowels.

Now, every beat of boots against hardwood hall
yields an ache for your knock on my door.

I want to dance with you,
trip under unbalanced steps,
pose your cigarette on unpainted lips.

I want to sketch our fingers interlaced,
listen to the way your voice claims my name.
Read all your letters out loud,
over and over,

but you are too consumed with
watching paint drip from forearm
to hear my spin on your words.

You stumble your speech, hiss alcohol,
use death as an excuse for a cold bed.
Say, in the mumble of the morning,
you love me still.

I only mutter how the bloodied
canvas before me is all I need to know of frailty.

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