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After He Left

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

They said
I would start
hearing things:

the heater
click-click-clicking
on and off,

cars driving by
at all hours,
the tap, tap, taping of
the dog’s toe nails
on the kitchen floor,

a phone call
at two am,
the crash of the ice
from the freezer,
the rattle of wind
knock-knock-knocking
at the front door.

They said
I would hear
remnants of
our life together
in the morning news,

the creak-creak-creaking
of sunken
floorboards,
in the way the
blankets rustle
to the floor,

and the way water
drip-drip-drips
from faucet.

But I don’t
hear anything,
only silence.

Nothing but
silence.

“After He Left” is previously published in Door is a Jar (2023).

 

Forever

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

The lies have always
come easy. A candy coated
vibration between tongue and tooth.

But the promise of forever
sparse slips between lips;

sweet slander,
rarely invoked.

That truth came early and often,
at least to anyone paying attention
to the shift of sun across sky,

the bloom of flower toward dawn,
or the ceaseless shedding of skin cells.

The flux of uncertainty,
measured only by the assurance of change
leaves hands grasping for stone monuments
and brick buildings, as if holding on to
a hardier composition can create a sense
of stability.

As though one may convince
themselves there is no impermanence at all,

but we have all witnessed
the easy break and eventual mend of bone.
We have regularly watched the shift of clouds
constructing and destructing across sky.

I have never been one to count
my syllables, or consider the validity of each
statement that cusses from mouth,

but forever is one lie
I will forever
resist.

“Forever” is previously published on Saturday’s Sirens (2023).

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).