Kakie Pate: Passing Home

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Passing Home

An endless lullaby: wind
rustling through leaves

leaving only a few survivors,
light pouring through the absences—

a kaleidoscope of red, yellow, brown.
Looking up, my face is wet with those

left drifting. I needed
to help them, needed

to run back to my house—
feet scuffing their brothers and sisters—

to rummage through the arts and crafts box,
to hurry back into the forest—

overflowing with shadows and eternal
trees—knowing a glue stick would fix it all. 

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Kakie Pate is an MFA candidate in poetry at Emerson College and works as the assistant poetry editor for the literary journal Redivider. Her poems have been published in The Messenger and And So Yeah. A native Virginian, she currently resides in Boston,Massachusetts.