You taught me how to play the game
that I already knew. But when you showed
me how to climb up to the clouds, I fell
and crashed into the sea. The high waves
rose until they swallowed me whole
and spit me up, back in your arms, curled
onto your lap, your Jeep holding you
how you held me. I leaned and tried to breathe
heat onto your neck. But I remembered:
You’re married now. So I turned and faced
the steaming window, thinking of a time
when you didn’t think everything I did
was wrong. I tucked the kisses back
in my mind and grasped as a bird
in a storm. And I remembered. Friends.
So I’ll play that game that you know
I knew and wait. Wait as the wind waits
for the leaves to grow fresh on trees
so it can blow through knowing
that at least, in some way, it’s held.
Katelyn Dunne is an alumna of University of the Cumberlands. She hails from and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Previously, she has been a Managing Editor at The Drowning Gull, Associate Editor at Zoetic Press, and Student Editor at Pensworth. Her writing and artwork have been published in Pensworth, The Albion Review, NonBinary Review, Aurora, The Poetry Marathon Anthology in 2017, 2019, and 2020, as well as several of Z Publishing’s anthologies. In her spare time, she enjoys attending Catholic mass and eating vegetarian entrees.
Pensworth 