On days like this

Katrina Kaye

One days like this
I feel like the pills
stopped working, that
I need a higher
dose and I consider
calling my doctor,
saying I can’t
get out of bed, saying
there is nothing
here for me.

On days like this,
I hug friends for no
reason and don’t let go.
My dog’s brown eyes make
me cry when I have no time
to take him for a walk,
and I think I need a
new prescription,
to call someone,
to disappear for a while.

On days like this,
on days like this,
I think of my mother
and how she has made it
through days like this.
I must make it too.

On days like this,
on days like this,
I think of the clever words
I should have written
in bathroom stalls
in big, black sharpie marker.
I think about what
I should have be said
the last time we met
and how that moment is
forever gone.

On days like this,
On days like this,
I think of the woman driving
the bus the same age as me
and wonder if she’s happy.
I think of all the little
lost marbles and pens
that never had a chance
to run out of ink.
I think about the rock
not pretty or special enough
to be collected and
the way the world ends
when you die.
I think of the promises
I made to myself and
the silence that came
when I broke them.

On days like this,
on days like this,
on days like this,
I don’t know if I can
make another day
like this.

Transparent

Katrina Kaye

I am nothing,
if not transparent;

skin a shallow
cloak
clearly
spotted with
intentions
colored and
shaded by layers
of cells
unfurling.

I am missing teeth,
the stubbornness
of religion; I am mourning
more than I thought I would.

I am combat.
I am ridiculous.
I am nothing
but a smile
and a lazy morning.

I am coated in silent patience
and an empty womb; I am settled
in the sunlight of afterthought;
a million miles removed.

I am nothing
if not easy to
see through.

I am ghost,

transparent,

nothing.

Disintegration

Katrina Kaye

I am no longer
tied to
the tangible.
I spread
wings. I fly.
Dripping
flesh from bone,
leaving cells
skipping
into the wind.
I wasn’t built
to be statue.
You knew it
the first time
you grabbed
my hand and
it dissipated
like sand.

 

I have learned

Katrina Kaye

We spent the first part
of Sunday digging a splinter
out of his foot on the back stoop.
A cloudy, windy morning. A painful,
yet bearable procedure.

The splinter callused over 
so we broke the skin to dig.
I began the excavation,
but after so many flinches
and moans, I let him do it
himself.

I have learned it is easier
to inflict pain on yourself
than to let someone you love
do it to you.

The splinter was a stubborn
thing and by the time it was
out there was a hole of pink
flesh and clear pus left in
its wake. I did what I do best
and cleaned the open wound.
Alcohol, antiseptic, and bandage.

He said a bandage wouldn’t hold.
It will help, I say, I have learned
it will help.

What You Left Behind

Katrina Kaye

tubes of paint
brushes hardened
by soaking kerosene
three blank canvases
one tinted yellow
the taste of turpentine

a stain from spilt turpentine
spots on the wall from paints
all a different shade of yellow
a patch of carpet hardened
with the oil dripped from canvas
that would dissolve with kerosene

I drank the left over kerosene
mixed it with a shot of turpentine
spat it on canvas
and covered it with paint
my gut burned and hardened
into a shade of greenish yellow

a lighter shade of yellow
when mixed with kerosene
colors hardened
cannot be scrubbed with turpentine
and what is one to do with paints
and blank canvas

I stood your canvas
in the sun’s yellow
squeeze on palate your abandoned paints
dissolved brushes in kerosene
lighten texture with turpentine
wonder how long it took to hardened

After hours colors hardened
an abstract display on canvas
I used turpentine
to correct the yellow
and kerosene
to fix fumbled paints

I hardened beautiful yellow
portrait on canvas, set brushes in kerosene
then threw turpentine to smear paints

Letters

Katrina Kaye

He was never articulate,
educated yet unimaginative.
He knows this.
He knows I know this.

It is not that I expect poetry
over prose. I am the writer
between the two.
It is an old anxiety
only recently resurfaced.

He does not write to me.
Instead he sends me sketches.

One of coffee in a paper cup,
planes in the background through large
thick windows.
One of the rails of a balcony with a
river rushing below.
One of me, lip bite and eyes shining
as I watched him go.

His words are simple,
“I miss you” and “thank you.”

In my letters,
I ask him about the weather,
he sketches the rain on the window.
I ask him if he is keeping busy,
he sketches a sketch of him sketching
within a sketch of him sketching.

I ask him if he’s lonely,
he sketches my face among the rumpled
blankets of morning, sun streaking
from the windows behind me.
He sketches two children playing
invisible violins and reading each other’s palms.

Her ghost does not haunt these pictures,
and I wonder where he keeps her now.

If her wrapped body still
hangs heavy in his hands,
if the slideshow in his mind
still flashes on her crumpled body.
If he still blames himself
for being moments too late.

I know he does.

I ask him if he had forgiven himself,
he sketches houses rebuilt and clear skies.
In a moment of weakness,
I ask him if I will ever see him again.
To this he replies with words,
hand scrawled and sloppy,
“I count the days, my dearest friend.”

 

Bound for Great Things

Katrina Kaye

Chicago wants your hands,
the creases of your knuckles,
the calluses on fingers.
New York is hungry for your history,
a collection of the photographs
your mind took and formed into line
and oil. Boston knows too well
the way you weave your words
onto a canvas.

I am just a girl in New Mexico
sitting by window sill,
bandaging the blisters,
filling journal with words
that belong to the last picture
left on the
your palms.

I am too soaked to continue
to sponge the pain that leaks
over your rim.

You are wasting time among desert,
choking on the dry memories of youth,
attempting to rebuild the house
you burnt to the ground ten years ago.

You have not built a home in my bed,
you are merely hiding there,
tracing eternity on my sheets
pretending to be the boy who left me
at the train station.

They call to reclaim their wayward son,
posing pretty, waiting for your hands
to reclaim their essence.

Atlantic

Katrina Kaye

I always knew
you would be leaving.
The Atlantic has called you
ever since she first saw your hands,
ever since she first
watched you take a picture of her
with the photography of your mind
and place her colors to canvas.

She adores you 
and she is calling.

I am no match to her pull.

She is not alone.
Your mailbox overflows
with eager offers.
Everyone wants a piece of your madness.

Yet, I had you first,
and selfishly want to tether you near.
I want every painting to be a sunrise we watched.
I want every part to be you and me.
I want to wrap myself in
this home we have created.

But there are oceans in your eyes,
and when you look at me
I see crashing waves and city streets.
What can the desert offer such a boy
with a mind for the minute
and hands like yours
always drawing themselves.

I knew it was just a matter of time
before you work your way east,
leave me to the west.

Lighthouse

Katrina Kaye

Every blink
of your eyes

is a sunrise at sixteen,
when you told me

you loved me
and we watched the

sun eat the black.
Fifteen years later

you cling to me,
and I let you.

With each kiss
I promise

safe harbor,
with each touch

I seek to steer
your path.

I am
no beacon.

I am easily lost
to the night,

unable to guide
ships led astray.

My hands cannot
retain heat,

cannot heal or
offer cure from pain.

Yet, there is
a light in me

that still hopes I can
lead you home.

 

Watercolor painting of North Carolina lighthouse Original painting and fine art proofs available at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/RFoxWatercolors

Meadow

Katrina Kaye

childhood playground
fallen prey to constant foot falls

the shift of flood to drought
the scorch of day evaporates
morning dew on slick leaves of grass

the numb of night wilts
long stalks of mild green
into withered waste

it always seemed safe here
somehow perpetually permanent

but this world is volatile
it is always taking
turning what is
into what was

heaven dries in the barren heat
and heaves into wasteland
children lose their fairy wings
and become merely human

the meadow transforms
like all things must 

magic is dissected
into practical parts
and disappears