On a rainy day in a fluorescent classroom, the girl sees his quick face in a child’s crayon drawing: the most of him she’ll ever get again. There are children with minds fresher than new love and that much self is frightening. The girl has not found something big enough to hold onto. Her own flesh is not enough. So the girl shares her pain with someone who doesn’t deserve it. In a Chinese restaurant that smells like warm fish, she sits alone and writes on a paper napkin the definition of to share: To leave scraps of yourself somewhere you’ve forgotten to love. To open yourself to the deepest spot of this life, wet and dark. To eat it, unafraid, and let the juices stain your clean teeth.
The girl dreams of herself as a three-legged dog. She hikes Bernal Hill in the October rain. Her paws are muddied and raw. At the top the city unfolds under her like a ribbon uncurling. A grid of streets and houses and hills. The city is made of negative spaces. When the girl returns to herself, her bedroom is nothing but a streak of streetlamp light through the window and the noise of the sidewalk below. There is a woman who repeats that she wants to fuck God. She wants to fuck God because he isn’t doing anything else for her. The girl has seen the woman before on the street. There is an emptiness in the woman’s face. Whenever the girl feels unfilled she goes to the ocean to let the salt soak into her.
She buries abandoned beer cans into herself. Sand-filled and crushed. To make part of herself whole. The girl wonders if the moth that has been living on her bedroom ceiling knows about the smallness of this place. To remember the smallness of this place the girl returns to herself as a three-legged dog. She sits on the sidewalk at dusk. Her right front stump flops lifelessly. The empty woman passes by without a glance. As a three-legged dog she watches a family carving pumpkins on their front porch. They are surrounded by newspaper. Every finger is orange and slimy. The pumpkins are scalped. The pumpkins are gutted. The pumpkins are cut into something they are not.
When it’s late enough the girl spills onto the street, opens herself like a dying tulip to anyone who might catch her. The street is a river silver with fish, their scales each a tiny shimmering animal. The girl is caught by so many animals’ sharp teeth. Her skin is marked with red punctures. She watches each one harden with dark blood. At this hour the girl can’t identify other humans. She holds hands with a wolf standing on two legs. In the morning her skin is covered in rash. The girl is allergic to dogs. Her bedroom is bright with morning and swimming with trapped air. The girl sweats. Her eyes bulge. She opens the window and smells begonias. The girl turns pink as their blossoms.
You fucked me for the last time and in the morning
The morning we woke snarled impossibly together
The Girl Pretends to Believe in Rebirth
The girl dreams of herself as a three-legged dog. She hikes Bernal Hill in the October rain. Her paws are muddied and raw. At the top the city unfolds under her like a ribbon uncurling. A grid of streets and houses and hills. The city is made of negative spaces. When the girl returns to herself, her bedroom is nothing but a streak of streetlamp light through the window and the noise of the sidewalk below. There is a woman who repeats that she wants to fuck God. She wants to fuck God because he isn’t doing anything else for her. The girl has seen the woman before on the street. There is an emptiness in the woman’s face. Whenever the girl feels unfilled she goes to the ocean to let the salt soak into her.
She buries abandoned beer cans into herself. Sand-filled and crushed. To make part of herself whole. The girl wonders if the moth that has been living on her bedroom ceiling knows about the smallness of this place. To remember the smallness of this place the girl returns to herself as a three-legged dog. She sits on the sidewalk at dusk. Her right front stump flops lifelessly. The empty woman passes by without a glance. As a three-legged dog she watches a family carving pumpkins on their front porch. They are surrounded by newspaper. Every finger is orange and slimy. The pumpkins are scalped. The pumpkins are gutted. The pumpkins are cut into something they are not.
The Girl Becomes Predictable
When it’s late enough the girl spills onto the street, opens herself like a dying tulip to anyone who might catch her. The street is a river silver with fish, their scales each a tiny shimmering animal. The girl is caught by so many animals’ sharp teeth. Her skin is marked with red punctures. She watches each one harden with dark blood. At this hour the girl can’t identify other humans. She holds hands with a wolf standing on two legs. In the morning her skin is covered in rash. The girl is allergic to dogs. Her bedroom is bright with morning and swimming with trapped air. The girl sweats. Her eyes bulge. She opens the window and smells begonias. The girl turns pink as their blossoms.
In the End, There Are Stains That Never Rinse Clean
You fucked me for the last time and in the morning
the sheets were marked with red fingerprints. There
are things you could never know: that for you I forgot
myself for the length of a star’s death. That the flood
born inside my lungs when we first touched drowned
the down feathers from my body. That your citrus
breath would have been my ruin. Because your mouth
was a home for the lost. And I was lost and lost again.
When you left you gave me all the pennies you found
under your bed collected in a mason jar. For weeks
after I dreamt of fields littered with copper, greening
in a steady rain. In the End, the Birds Told Harsh Truths
The morning we woke snarled impossibly together
for the final whispered time, we unclasped our sticky
hands and in the center of my palm was a pearl, oval
and murky as the white of an injured eye. You held it
on your cupped tongue and when I tried to take it into
my mouth you swallowed it whole and said it was an
accident. In the bright kitchen you cracked two eggs
into a hot pan. One yolk spilled from its shell marbled
with blood. You said, some things are meant to only
live partial lives, and tipped it into the trashcan. When
I walked outside, empty-stomached, the birds stopped
singing all at once. Silent in their nests of stolen moss.
Hillary Katz’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Salamander, burntdistrict, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, and other journals. Originally from Vermont, she is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire. She reads for Weave Magazine and teaches poetry and translation in middle schools. She lives in San Francisco.
Hillary Katz’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Salamander, burntdistrict, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, and other journals. Originally from Vermont, she is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire. She reads for Weave Magazine and teaches poetry and translation in middle schools. She lives in San Francisco.