Katrina Kaye

In my dream you were alive.

I saw you:

a broken man with crooked smile
telling me it’s been seventeen years.
You’ve been looking for me for
seventeen years. You’ve been in love
with me for seventeen years.

It’s been seventeen years since
your spine cracked upon impact.
It was just one of those things that happen,

an accident.

No one’s fault;

No one to shoulder the blame.

It has been seventeen years since we
raced the halls together. A good kid
who smiled too much. A chip of broken tile
and notes passed by girls. You never should
have become a name smeared to highway.
Never should have been anything more than

a fond memory,

a high school crush,

an old alliance,

a childhood friend.

Now, you survive in the pit of my stomach,
and despite a promise of pleasant reminiscence,
the dream shifts to the crack of skeleton,
the shattering of front tooth.

I can’t trade this image
for a kinder one. It haunts me.

For seventeen years,

it haunts me still.

More than anything,

I want to find you, to call you,
to write you a message in my
sloppy script assuring you
some things never die. But
you are already lost to me.

This is how I wake, chasing
rabbits and trailing sparrows. At
a loss for what I cannot quite
reach. You were always the illusive
one. So I lay here and I endure and
it is as sweet as the Sunday morning
we never shared.

“Seventeen Years” is previously published in Anvil Tongue (2022) and MockingOwl Roost (2022).