Kaye

Poetry Didn’t Save My Life

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Poetry didn’t save my life,
but we did swim naked together
in the lake up north one sunny afternoon
when we thought no one was looking,

and we’ve been caught more than once
sharing a cup of bitter coffee and overly sugared pie
at all night truck stops off the highway
along the hours of one a.m.

She brushed my hair the morning
of my grandfather’s funeral.

and sang with me in the passenger seat
on the drive from Bakersfield to Porterville
when the string of spotted horse
raced alongside us over the golden hills.

She’s the one who threw the jawbone
of the dead rabbit at my windshield.

No, poetry didn’t save my life,
but I’ve watched her save others.

She pulls bodies from the snow,
throws a line if they can’t reach her fingers,
and leaves them to sleep it off on my living room couch.

Just as I bring as many as I can gather
strapped tall atop the roof of car and
dragged through still burning field to her door.

I pass her gospel,
the most diligent of missionaries.

We are sisters,                     lovers,                   playmates,

co-conspirators,

we stand on opposite sides of the same bed
to balloon sheets and straighten comforter,

she encases my body with both arms
and recites childhood stories
as she rocks me to sleep
long after the boys are gone.

We are intertwined,
blonde streaking brown more discreetly
than the white of time.

She resides nestled
under skin inside bone,
tangled inside every vein of my forearm,
knotted into bent knees and calloused feet,

and late at night,
she whispers her stories in my ear
seeds I scrawl to page
before they slip back into the sheets.

I repay this kindness
by humming incantations in the cadence
she taught me

in every word I write,

in every sound I utter,

across every mile I travel.

And when she outlives me,
as all revered loves do,

she will miss her cockeyed collaborator
and rhapsodize eulogies
when no one remains to listen.

She didn’t find me,
resurrect me,
breath life back into me,
we’ve always been together,

here,                           one.

“Poetry didn’t save my life” is previously published in Catching Calliope Vol 1 Winter 2014.

Upon Waking

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I slide into hot
afternoon, the heat
slipping between us,
your lips devouring mine,
bodies distorting
against one another.

Perhaps it was just sex.

An outburst
of frustration and
pent up aggression,
of teeth and tongues,
cock and cunt,
quiver and croon,
a moan of name
under a roar
of profanities as
I let myself cum
again and again
all over you.

Perhaps it signified
nothing.

This morning
I wake alone,
but there was a
moment between
then and now where
you held me
as my naked body
shivered in the
cast of the afternoon
sun, sweat drying
on navel, your arm
supporting the nape
of my neck.

There is a
piece of me,
a shard,
thin and silver,
precious and frail,
I left behind

and allowed
you to keep.

“Upon Waking” is previously published in the collection, my verse…, published by Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC in 2012.

Safe as Houses

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

You are not my last resort;
I just didn’t have anywhere else to go.

You allow me access to
the far side of your leather chair
and reluctantly gather your grandmother’s
folded quilt and spare pillow from hall closet,
stale and stiff from lack of use.

My intention is not to reclaim
the former comfort of the living room
we once shared, nor reminisce
the passing of a romance which outlasted
its welcome.

It has been a long time
since you have found
my endearments in the form
of wet towels on the floor
or shoes left in the hallways.

But you don’t have to love me anymore
to let me sleep on your couch.

I can cook you breakfast
without imagining your fingers
sulking the lip of my jeans
and I can pretend there
was never a time my body
folded like paper under your fingers
as I sit across the table from you.

We can deny the last two years
of pelting rocks against plaster walls
until they were unable to hold up the home
we painstakingly pieced together.

We can pretend we don’t
remember the full moon we crushed
into a single stone that shone greater
than the sun when held in our cupped hands.

Despite the comfort of the way you
arch your eyebrow and the familiarity
of my name on your tongue,
I know how it will end.

I’ve seen this episode more than once.

It is only for a couple of days
till my feet stand sober,
until I can find a shelter for tired eyes,
a place to boil my water.

Soon we will resume our steps
in opposite directions,

and brick our skeletons
into the wall where their
rattle will eventually
shudder to a bare tremor.

“Safe as Houses” is previously published in the collection, my verse…, published by Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC in 2012.