BY KATY HINTZEN

i used to watch Her outside my window,
lying in the grass at midnight,
stealing Grace from the wind.

Aloof and Cold,
you can worship Her Beauty
but never be close.

shards of Ice gently dissecting my heart
with inconsiderate Honesty.

Harvest Moon,
blessing the dark void
with beams of Compassion.
Her face,
Full and Open
but a million miles away.

we can fly a man to the Moon
but not his daughter.

BY KATY HINTZEN

my Grandfather had red hair.

I never saw it,
but I imagine it would have been the color of fire
when it burns too brightly,
schorching with intensity.

When I knew him,
it was soft and white,
a wreath of feathers
masking a hard surface.

His navy buddies called him Red
Soild.
Uncompromising.
The color of blood scarficed
and scars that never healed.

He used to love telling stories,
commanding his audience
with memories of the past.
They gave him control
the World,
if only for a moment.

I would lie on the floor in the evening
listening to his voice
coated in layers of roughness,
gathering by decades of cigarette smoke,
the coarse texture of the carpet branding
pink polka dots into my elbows.

When he died,
my grandmother told me to
take something
from his drawer to remember him by.

I sat in their room,
on the bed that still smelled like him,
searching through the empty trinkets
that failed so completely
to capture him.