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Till Death

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

They serve time together. They sleep late on Sunday mornings and catch up with the chores on the weekends. They have the same small way of passing time and use the same phrases when no one else is around.

They don’t need words half the time. The other half they do not have anything to say at all, but that’s okay, isn’t it? Time builds comfort into silence. How easy to serve time when you enjoy the company. How simple serving time has become when it asks so little.

Just an insistence on attention every once in a while, here and there, and when they forget the weight time has over them, they are gifted a grey hair or two, a sore back, and a faded memory. Because time needs to remind us that it is still in charge. It is selfish that way.

It is unapologetic for the days it takes and demands gratitude for all that it consents to give. How easy to give yourself over, to lose identity and singularity to the passing of time, the change of the calendar, the days and nights, the spring, winter, and eventual fall.

 

“Till Death” is previously published in The Fringe 999 (2024).

Alice

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

little girl
with the
blue dress

acts sad
as she
prances around
the yard

pretending fish
tell tales
and looking-glasses
hold more
than reflections

she stopped
eating
the pink
frosted cookies
when she
found out
they were
the reason
she got
so big

she stopped
digging in
the backyard
after she
realized all
the rabbits
fled their holes

she wishes
her imagination
would take
hold of
her again

instead of
teasing her
with glimpses
into what
might be

if only
she could
fall asleep
a second time

“Alice” is previously published in A Scattering of Imperfection (2009) and More Fire than Sun (2008).

Prayers

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I know prayers like crickets,
small and sharp.

I pray to resist the temptation
of a Thursday night in the back
of your car and one drink too many.

I pray my body is in a state of redemption.

I pray skin toughens under desert sun;
the sand in my chest scrubs me clean,
scours the ill, the wicked,
the ugly
until it shines.

Do not allow me to regress into sickness.

Lead me not to deteriorate
into the fragile I once was.

I pray,

holding tight to wooden beads
that coddle the crook of my throat
cutting off circulation to hands,

 for daylight,

 for the flutter of wings,

for morning song.

“Prayers” is previously published in After Happy Hour Review (2022).