
for Katarina
she told me
that she first felt
the cancer inside of her
when she laughed
she said the tumors
looked like
sunspots when x-rayed
I felt a breakage
all the way down
deep inside
yet somehow
her eyes
still smiled
when we kissed
I could taste
her sickness
one night
I commented
on her naked body
while we were
making love
I said,
“even your scars
seem luminous
to my eyes”
she thought
I said stars
it was true,
you know
I could have
looked at her
for 500 more years
and every time
she’d still seem new
to me
I’ve kept the cassette tape
she gave me
for my 17th birthday
weightless recordings
of Katarina playing violin
for a roomful of family
and their friends
when she was just a child
young lithe fingers
a deft ballet across
the slender neck
of that sad, old instrument
the music never cries
it simply says,
I’m alive
the tape is worn thin
it hisses now
not like a snake
but rather
an easy zephyr
through the trees
when they are full
I keep an old cassette deck
out in my van
sometimes
I just drive in circles
around the neighborhood
where she lived
and listen to what
she has to say
as she breaks
to be beautiful
as her grace
disrupts the disorder
of my day.
______________
William Crawford