Kate Light: There Comes the Strangest Moment

There comes the strangest moment in your life,

when everything you thought before breaks free—

what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite

looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin’s gone pale, your brain is shedding cells;

you question every tenet you set down;

obedient thoughts have turned to infidels

and every verb desires to be a noun.

I want—my want. I love—my love. I’ll stay

with you. I thought transitions were the best,

but I want what’s here to never go away.

I’ll make my peace, my bed, and kiss this breast…

Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice.

Things people told you turn out to be true.

You have to hold that body, hear that voice.

You’d have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you’d never change?

But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.

Kate Light: Remember

when you’re lonely in your room, and the year
is hovering in your eyes; remember, when
he calls you late and sorry, how the tears
had made you wise; how it happened again
and again, pushing you out and pulling you in,
and how his words were wind that fanned your fears;
how he could not help himself, though his skin
was sweet and soft, and though – when you were near -
he was drawn to you; how his 

body was truth and on-
ly his body was truth – no, no, remember how lost
you felt and how often, and how high the cost,
and how close Love sat next to Lone.
Remember – a whispering in your vein – how keen
the pleasure, but how stabbing deep the pain.