Katrina Kaye

This room is broken blackbird with misshapen wings.

You are cheap hotel bed sheets,
rough to the touch,
slipping too easily off the corners of a mattress
too hard for the spine.

I am crushed pomegranate seeds
popping between tongue and teeth,
a temporary stain shared on lips.

These gestures are swollen feet and strained nerves.

The pressure of thumb
on throat as we take this kiss
is assurance your intentions
are not to break me.

We slide and sling like cocktails and olives,
one sipping off the other
until we are both helpless.

The cuss of your breath on my neck,
and the pinch of thumb on thigh,
conjures dread for the morning’s rippling cold.

These window panes are splitting sunrises
and eleven am check outs.

While you rise, I retrace promises you carved in
tender flesh of eyelids and inner arm.

Pretending to sleep, I listen,
with hands curled under chin,
the sounds of your departure.

You have dug a trench inside me
from gut to gullet.

You fill me there.

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