Poetry By Katherine Nazzaro

​Checkmate


You never heard the warning bells,
just the cracking of bones
             —your left hand as shattered as your future.
It was never supposed to end like this.

You held on so long before now,
kept your head down,
            your shoulders hunched, said
This is where I belong, said,
it’s better here. Mistaking the white spots
in your vision for a light show.
You never saw them as the warning sign they were,
your body’s desperate plea
for you to take in oxygen.
            It was never supposed to end like this.

You called it safety, called it home,
called all your wounds collateral damage
             —called them deserved.
You thought the pain meant you were still here,
forgetting the way a body can continue to bruise
even after a heart has stopped beating.




Red Nail Polish


I’m crying on the floor again.
            There are too many stories that start
             with exactly these words,
but I’m crying on the floor.
Again.
Red nail polish oozes across the floor
            looking like fresh blood in the low light.
There’s glass everywhere,
and my friend keeps telling me to put on shoes,
let him clean this up,
do I want to get hurt?
The nail polish looks like blood,
            and I’m crying on the floor,
            which is now stained red.
Someday,
I will be able to look at red nail polish
and not think blood.
Someday, I will not remember
the way a blade feels against my wrists.
Someday, I will pull out the broken glass
that has always been under my skin,
and when I’m asked do I want to get hurt?
I will put on some goddamn shoes.




Here


Just like that I'm 19 again,
             smoking broken cigarettes in the woods.
The only person I'm hiding it from is myself,
                         as if by doing this in secret I can hide the addiction--
but I'm the only one who knows,
and the only one who cares.

I'm writing poetry in the dark,
as if this makes it more real, more
who I am, instead of just an English major, pretending--
             like somehow, I can erase the future and put in someone else's words.

This is the way time goes in circles.
This is the way smoke becomes fire.
I wait until sunset to start a project that was due three days ago,
because it's prettier that way, right?
That's what matters.
Because prettier is what makes it better,
                                                                           right?
If it looks good it must be okay--

When John Keats got sick
his friends raised enough money for him to go
to Italy to recover,                      and he didn't.
I mean he went,
            but he didn't get better.

When I got sick,
I stayed in my room for three days,
with the lights off,
             —as if that would make me better.
As if by not existing my friends wouldn't have to take me anywhere.

So I took myself to the woods and thought          here.
I took myself to the woods and I thought
          no one will know.

My lungs have never given up on themselves,
never broken down until all I breathe is blood,

              but I know the feeling of drowning.

When Wordsworth brought himself to the woods,
             it meant hope, and nature, and beauty,
and God.

I bring myself to the woods,
as if this is where poetry lives.
            —as if by taking out my own heart I can fill my chest with something better.

Who are you hiding from?
                          Is it only yourself?
I bring myself into the woods, and I turn off my phone,
and I think this is it.

I'm not on a boat in a storm-tossed ocean.
No one will ever find my mummified heart.
            I'm the only one who can pull myself from this sickness.
There will be no trip to Italy.

I bring myself out of the woods,
still smelling like cigarette smoke--
            still smelling like fire, still feeling like drowning.
But I bring myself out of the woods anyway
                                   and start over.

​

Bio: Katherine Nazzaro graduated from Bridgewater State University in 2017 with a major in English and a concentration in Classics. She has loved Greek mythology since she was a child, which influences a lot of her writing. In her spare time she volunteers at her local library, forgets the name of every book she’s ever read and enjoyed, and changes her mind twice a minute.

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