Kaye

Warrior

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

There is a problem
with becoming a warrior;

a sense of posture and
responsibility once
established is near
impossible to slouch.

Despite the tattoos,
scars, and harsh vocabulary
there are grenades
crumbling in my chest.

The child sacrificed
is hollering
through bones,
rattling through
circulation.

I carved a line that
cannot be uncrossed.

This shield can’t be dropped
for fear of an exposed vein.
My bow ever present
for fear of an empty hand.

The lullabies I forever
hummed by heart have
turned too sweet
to pass through these split lips.

It has been years
since the perfection of childhood,

yet I still curl like innocence
into the corners of my bed,
lying still so as not to be found.

“Warrior” is previously published in September (2014).

I did not leave you

/ Katrina Kaye / 1 Comment

Katrina Kaye

due to the dirty dishes
or unrepaired holes in
the plaster. It was the
silence of your eyes.
Their passion drained
of all its red, the red
I once watched crawl
across your bed, before
it was our bed when I
was still chasing
dreams of migration.
It was the daily dregs
which cut the ropes of
our first love. The
terrible expression of
your day sipping cheap
beer just to get you
to sleep. It was when
we stopped going to bed
together and just slept
in the same place among
slightly different time
lines. The crack it left
was too severe and too
close to the skin. My
temperament dulled, the
anxiety that kept me bent
over kitchen sink has
dissipated and now I let
the dust collect on window
sill till it turns to mud
in the morning dew.

Previously published in Madness Muse Press (2020).

At the Poetry Reading

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I notice you
looking at me
across the bar.
We exchange a smile,
and I lower my eyes
to your stare.

It is lifetime since
I washed your
scent from my body,
yet I still shiver
from the remnants of
your touch.

I allow this.

I wonder who notices.
I wonder if they
smell the sex in the air;
if the stain of seduction
is as apparent as the
cigarette smoke which
halos overhead.
Can they tell
I want to touch
you from across the room?

I know you are nothing
more than a two o’clock
storm that flashed through a
New Mexico afternoon drenching me
in an uncontrollable downpour
before passing soundlessly over
the horizon.
I know the monsoons
of summer dry fast
when the sun revives.

Yet, during all the
reading and reciting,
the poetry and music,
the confessions poured across stage
eager for attention,
acknowledgment, acceptance,
I can do nothing but
summon the soft of
your skin under my nails.

“At the Poetry Reading” is previously published on Rabbits for Luck (2016).