New Mexico

There’s a Girl

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

There’s a girl
at the Route 66 gas station
asking for change.

You don’t have any,
but you offer to buy
her a soda on your credit card
as you pay for a pack of cigarettes
and a cup of coffee.

She is grateful,
says that’s all she really needs.

She’s with her mother,
a tired, silent woman,
grey hair greased to scalp,
sitting on the curb out front.
The old woman never speaks.

This girl has tattoos on her neck,
one by her eye.
Amateur ink scribbled
by shaking hands.

She’s thanks you again,
says she has make up to sell,
nose rings,
other small snatchable items
that seep out of her pocket.

You listen,
you refuse.

She won’t let you leave till you
take a bottle of nail polish
in gratitude.
It’s a color you will never wear.

You know her,
this girl,
with the too thin limbs
and chapped lips.

You almost were her
once.
Asking for change,
grateful for just a kind reply.

You still feel ashamed
for all you had,
that you let slip away.

She asks for a ride.
You lie and say you’re going the other way.
She nods, smiles,
knows where your line sticks.
Your eyes reflect each other
as both recognized the person
you could have become.

“There’s a Girl” is previously published in Chasing Rabbits (2014).

Broken Dolls

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

We are
porcelain dolls
cracked on
floorboards.

White socks
and red ribbons.
Marble eyes
vacantly
comprehending
how we
ended up in pieces
on linoleum.

Arms distort
unable to grasp,
legs contort
unless beneath us.
Curls fall from clips,
rusty coal around
your pale skin.
Plum lip color smears
out of the lines
of your careful grin.

We lean against oven
wondering if we
will ever be
able to walk again,
and theorizing
why good
parties always end
on the kitchen floor.

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

Turning Tricks

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

You are not the girl you were before,
but not all these tricks are new.
Some remain trapped inside pulled muscles
and survival instinct.

Disfigurement of fingerprint bruises
on fourteen-year-old trachea.
White striped scars against tanned skin.
Tiny circles of cigarette tips
left on the underside of American thighs.

Old tricks concealed in the green casing of
jade scarves, ill patterned tattoos,
and skirts cut at the knees.

There is a metamorphosis scratching,
a change of perception
hanging upside down from the higher branches.
Discoloration solidifies,
a healing of harm inflicted on adolescent flesh.

Balancing acts shift from high beam to fingertips.
Sleeves conceal tricks of trade
instead of slices at the nape of wrist.

You’re not the girl you were before
and not all these tricks are old.

A reformation recognizable
not only in breastbone and high forehead,
but in the pacing of breath and the stillness of soul.

Cocoon continues to cling to branch.
Skin sheds over five lifetimes,
caterpillar remnants catch on ankle,
but they do not drag you,

Transform under the thumb of time,
crack chrysalis into a thousand sharp flecks
and puzzle the pigments together into a
newly formed pattern, still crumpled and wet
with the residue of rebirth.

“Turning Tricks” is previously published in No Longer Water (2024).