Kate H. Koch is a graduate student at Harvard Extension School, where she is pursuing an ALM degree in Creative Writing and Literature. Kate is fascinated by all things macabre, and you can find her work in The Metaworker, Club Plum, BOMBFIRE, Cholla Needles, and Minnesota’s Best Emerging Poets of 2019: An Anthology, as well as a short story forthcoming in Corvid Queen Literary Magazine.
DECEMBER, FRAME-BY-FRAME
You can stand among the mess of frozen reeds—
the cattails dusted with frost’s last sigh,
their texture and fluff flaking down to the
glossy black underfoot, where weeds wave, caught
mid-move in a grip of ice thick enough
to stifle the hiss of the current, which
shouldn’t be a problem here anyway.
Hold my arm, your new gloves snag against my
worn wool sleeve, now pilling as we shuffle
with something like young love, our feet grazing
over multicrossed figure skater’s cuts—
they’re harmless, some surface wounds, don’t pay them
any mind, focus on me, on my sleeve,
which still smells like your cologne on my skin.
We’re almost there, the lake’s holy center,
where you’ll kneel beneath the moon and press your
open hands against the cold clear glass, cast
eyes searching the depths for a flicker of
fins in the grey light, when even waves don’t
dare ripple through the cool, o’er the blank black
empty.
