Beth by Kathryn Reese

22 lines
Issue 6 (Fall 2024)

She’s that one friend who shows up early
waits in the carpark feeding sparrows, taking selfies,
offering her hair for the crafting of nests.

I’m ten minutes late, messy bun, balm
and the dust of cocoa on my lips, my talon-
scarred wrist weeping honey and lye.

At parties, she’s in the kitchen, preaching
peace to the starlings, slicing lemons, embalming
strawberry hearts in pepper and balsamic.

I didn’t go to the party. Stayed home in my robe
muddling dark rum and blackberry syrup
with a cinnamon stick and sage.

It’s not that I want to be alone, it’s that—
the corvids were calling me to roam,
to hunt ghosts to consume—
and, ravenous, I
swallowed a graveyard entire.

She’s that one friend with an instinct for burning—
shows up with a glass of water and ice jade eyes.
She holds back my hair.
I vomit ash
and feathers and try to explain.

Kathryn Reese is a poet living on Peramangk land in Adelaide, South Australia. She works in medical science and enjoys solo road trips, hiking and chasing frogs to record their calls for science. Her poems can be found in Gone Lawn, The Engine Idling, Kelp Journal and Australian Poetry Journal (forthcoming). Her flash fiction “The Principal and the Sea” is published in FlashGlass and was nominated for the Best of the Net anthology.