Poem

Daughter

/ Katrina Kaye / Leave a comment

Katrina Kaye

She swims inside fingerprints,
an idea so distinctly you.

A mirage reflected between hot streets
and flattering moonlight.

She is the dancer in my wooden box,
guardian of secrets
whispering her own;
her spin,
seemingly innocent.

I would be lying if I didn’t say
you haunt me from her eyes.
A memory of water in my desert.
Just an illusion of your fingers
tracing the life line in right palm.

She blends ribbons of perfume through the air
and insists she invented this for our pleasure,
but we both know better.

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

Melody

/ Katrina Kaye / Leave a comment

Katrina Kaye

In the face
of absolute beauty
I find helplessness

forfeit.

It makes me want to
give up all I know,

all I am,

everything.

I am not a creator,

I am witness bystander.
I am stripped blind,

groping cold in darkness.

I am undeserving
of such light,
and powerless in
its presence.

Truly,
if there was a god,

is a god,

if there is light,

it is in melody,

I settle in awe,
sulk to silence unable to discern
the transcendence of song,

words mean so little.

“Melody” previously published in the collection, my verse…, published by Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC in 2012.

The Past

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

The past is not fallen leaves;
it is dirt blanketing newly planted seeds.
It is a crack in the window
causing the afternoon sun
to rainbow across my wall
where September’s cold seeps in.

The past is the eye lash fallen on cheek,
a turned up carpet and door with broken deadbolt,
a watch stopped five minutes till three.

Sometimes the past rebounds.
It scratches at door, curls
around fires, lays in my bed.
The past does not haunt me,
I haunt it. A lingering scent,
a familiar hand brushed upon
the small of my back.

In the clarity of reminiscence
I see what I have been looking away from.
It is stark and it is clear.
I must let the past solidify,
shape it into perpetual bricks,
and mend broken windows
until my house can stand.

I am leaving pieces of myself behind,
waiting for others to catch up,
wondering what it is about me
that is so easy to pass by.

“The Past” is previously published in September (2014).