New Mexico

Dreams

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I dismantled my dreams,
boxed them, stacked
my closet shelves.

They grow dusty beside
shoes and short skirts
I don’t wear as often
as I thought I would.

For years these dreams waited,
only to be unwrapped upon occasion
tried on, just to see if they still fit.
But they are not for the keeping.

I am done.

Come to that cold
melancholy realization
that I will never have
the guts to remove the tags.

Instead, I rewrap them,
bestow them, make peace
as I give them to you
one by one.

I don’t give them
as a curse, although
I can attest to the lack
of joy they have brought
time after time. I hope
they will do more for you
than they ever did for me.

I hope they will fit
and you can twirl merrily
to each new step.
These things:
dreams, hopes, love,
the intangible
aspects of myself I wanted
so badly to create,
to keep and harvest.

They are not meant to be.

I know that now.
I release them to another,
no regrets, no goodbyes.

“Dreams” is previously published in You Might Need to Hear This (2021).

Identity

/ Katrina Kaye / Leave a comment

Katrina Kaye

Wings can fold around a broken body
like a mother’s hold, offering calm and comfort,
yet, with white feather and brittle bone,
it is possible to create shadows with jagged edges
against the walls of littered alley ways.

Do we dare fight nature
in order to create our own identity?
Do we become what is expected
instead of spreading wings and creating
a current all out own?

We have become desperate for new names.
we call ourselves rat face, time bomb, clever,
we call ourselves outcast, twisted lip, beast, child,
never what we really are.

Instead of attempting to reinvent the self
shouldn’t we just accept these marks of birth
and scars of experience so distinct upon our presence.
Let them identify our beings like a mother in a mortuary.

How does one surrender wings
that have always marked existence?
How does one become something he is not?

These wings can never truly be clipped,
just sawed down, plucked and carved,
distinction momentarily hidden
destine to grow anew.

“Identity” is previously published in They Don’t Make Memories Like That Anymore (2011).

Highway

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Off the highway,
two miles outside of town,
the wind beckons
using a name  murmured by strangers.
It writes letters onto the skin of left hand
using an ex lover’s script
and gently presses right foot to pedal.

Open to the sky yet held earthbound,
vulnerable to asphalt and yellow lines,
entangled in turnpikes and exit signs.

Every unanswered desire
is painted inside rear view mirror,
a reminder of the path fate
once predicted, now left behind.

Between the pavement and the stars,
the road speaks violins and lifetimes,
ribbons and balloons freedom and possibilities,
the most gentle of gifts.

On this road two miles out of town,
a longing is conceived,
attached to every rib in cage,
to travel farther, to blister bare feet
with the miles trampled upon.

“Highway” is previously published in They Don’t Make Memories Like That Anymore (2011).