New Mexico

Shard

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Like glass, he shattered.

A thousand ragged pieces
slipped away from me
in the darkness.

Tiny shards of his existence
scattered into cracks and carpet,
lost until light returns
to reflect brightness into them.

But he is not waiting for the dawn,
not waiting to be put back together.
Slowly the debris settles in,
fading and returning,
like a person trying to hold on to sleep.
He stopped resisting.

And I can’t find him anymore,
not when I walk barefoot
on the kitchen floor,
not when I lie bare backed
on his Persian rug,
looking for the fragments of clear, sharp life
that once built a man.

He has been sucked up, swept up,
dug up, systematically removed.
I never imagined he’d be missed.

“Shard” is previously published in A Scattering of Imperfections (2009).

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).