Kate
 
That’s not my Kate, I said, her skin is pink,
scrubbed with carbolic soap, Elizabeth Arden blues
daubed behind pointed pierced ears. Matter of fact,
where are her earrings? Ridiculous feathered things,
the colour of lapis lazuli. Why isn’t she wearing them?
No, no, there’s been a mistake, I said,
that’s not my Kate.
 
Why isn’t she wearing her glasses, I asked.
They’re wide as an Owl’s orange stare, rimmed
with lemon yellow, shade of a sweet summer eve,
drunk on golden tequila. That’s not my Kate, I cried,
where are her glasses? My Kate always wore her glasses.
The fish-belly pale of this woman’s flesh
might look familiar, I admit, but no, no, that’s not my Kate.
 
She was found where? In twenty-four Holly drive?
Yes, yes, that was her address. The crumbling, quaint
white walls of her lonely little cottage. Her walls
clung with soft Ivy, tough bulrushes which knotted themselves
a serpent garland around the rusted black gate, where we’d sit and sip
PG-tips together, two sugars, a splash of milk.
But no, no, you’ve got the wrong woman. That’s not my Kate.
 
Self-defence wounds? Oh.
My Kate was a fighter, a silver-tongued,
claws-out warrior. Blood under her nails?
Skin in her teeth? Kate wore scabbed knees
from where she fell off her bike as a child, bruised
fists from punching men twice her size in the smoking area of Pryzm.
 
Oh, yes. I think so. I see it now, sir.
Yes officer,
                        That might be my Kate.

Ella Pheasant

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Ella Pheasant would be pleased to hear them