Iphigenia

Katrina Kaye

I am your sacrifice,
the daughter whose blood can gift you home.

A unwinding of fate,

another snipped thread,
not quite golden.

You promised me a warrior’s bed
but delivered only spilt blood, knife to throat.

Your most sacred of lambs.

It is easy to give up what you never wanted;
what you never saw as your own.

I was your daughter,
I was not born merely to burn.
I hatched to spread wings.

Did you always see me as just another pawn,

a toy,

a golden coin,

not even your most precious?

My death secured your travel,
your destination now foreseeable,
but not what greets you upon your home shore.

I am helpless to your maneuvers above high waters,

but my mother is not so forgiving

and she waits,

axe in hand.

Forgive

Katrina Kaye

Forgive the light from streetlamp that sinks
into the wet streets on Tuesday morning.

Forgive the words that are shared,
smeared, are cut up and divided out.

Forgive how clumsy your smile caught me
how fingers and shadows make excellent shows against cave wall.

Forgive the cave, the loneliness of it
and the isolation, the cruelty.

Don’t abandon my memory upon the rocks and
leave it for the dogs to dig up.

Forgive.

It is the only way to
find your way back.

It is the only way to learn better,
to see better, to love better, to be better.

I watch the rain and remember once believing
birds couldn’t fly when wet.

I know better now.

Broken Dolls

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).