To Her
Kathryn White
After Frank O’Hara, Roger Reeves, Ocean Vuong
Kat White is a current master's degree candidate studying agricultural leadership, education, and communications at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. With a previous Bachelor of Arts in English with a Concentration in Creative Writing, environmental themes, fantasy, and topics of discourse are at the center of her writing.
You’ll be grateful for
the way the holly leaves
tore at your skin with sweet-
smelling teeth someday. It is
the same lesson a mosquito learns
when she finds herself entombed
in amber. You know it already.
You were born with it grafted
onto the backs of your molars, so that
you may run your tongue over
the harshness of it and remember.
Pain is only a stranger if you
forget her name. Someday, I
hope you will love the world as it
has loved you, with a fierce tenderness
that roots and burrows into your nail beds that
reminds you that you are never alone.