Poem a Day

Wine Glass

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I position
his arms around
my body
so they hold me
like you used to
when we wedged
into the twin bed
in your basement studio
all those years ago.
I needed only to have
you beside me again,
to cure the cramp
in my gut and the crackle
in my throat with the comfort
of warm body and perfect embrace.

You are gone,
so I use him.

A restless boy with too
much to prove, who has your
height but not your eyes,
who makes me laugh like you
once did and likes to watch
me when I am looking away
so close to your sideways glance.

I shatter myself into him.
Being useless in this skin,
I sought the soul beneath.

It only broke
my heart a little
when he left,
no more than a wine glass
forgotten on the floor
crushed under the klutz
of an early morning
stumble toward bath.

“Wine Glass” is previously published in September (2014).

Memory

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I memorized your smile
so I can find it every
time I close my eyes to dream.
The wrinkle of lip,
scar of dimple, crack of tooth.

They are with me still.

I memorized the angle of cheekbone,
every cut of skin stretched,
the soft roll of forehead.
I counted each crease embedded.
Every freckle and discoloration,
the squint of eyes and the way
they shine my reflection.

I  know these parts in your absence.

I conjure them still
on the nights when my desire
to be a good woman is broken
by the solitude of my cavity;
on nights when I close my eyes,
and let you enter my mind.

Little girls are not supposed to fall in love
with little girls and despite self taught ambivalence,
your memory lingers. I find myself a scratch
on record, set to repeat. to repeat. to repeat. to repeat.

“Memory” is previously published in #TrueStory 2015.

Your Ghost

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

When I wake
your ghost is sitting
on the bedroom window sill.
The one the dog chewed through
that we never got around to fixing.

She plucks teeth marks with pale fingers,
glancing through the corners of eyes
pretending not to follow my movements.

She watches me rise,
and I resist the urge to tell her to look away
as I slip into robe and socks.

The last time I asked her to make me some coffee,
her face blackened to sorrow before she faded away.

I do not ask her for anything anymore.

Your ghost does not frighten me.
I am not the least bit startled when I see her
passing me in the hall,
drinking from the carton,
laying on the couch in the dim of morning.

I catch her staring a little too long,
stainless gray iris reflecting my face.
Unconditional patience woven
into the tangle of veins in the length of her reach,
wanting nothing more than the
contentment of touch.

She does not glare at the Spanish moss
webbed from regrets that hang
along my limbs.

She does not acknowledge
the crust of contrition
I have manifested inside
the lines of my face.
She sees me precious, unsullied,
as she promised she always would.

As an act of atonement,
an apology for my life after your death,
an attempt to weave back into you,
I’ve wrapped your ghost
around my body like loose ribbons,

desperate
to recreate your arms snaked around me,
to feel your exhale on the crook of my neck,
to taste the pulp of your skin with the plum of lip,

wanting nothing more
than the contentment
of touch.

“Your Ghost” is previously published in The Fall of a Sparrow (2014).