Future Roadkill

you are a doe ensnared by                          milky beams
of light I am        a spoon scraping             the bottom
of the bowl          my father is        an Advent calendar
filled with doors and       windows               you make a better
               door than a window              I make a better
poem than a secret            tell me my words landed
                 safely                        there have been so many
plane crashes lately                                 I miss you like a child
misses its ratty teddy bear                 forgotten at the other
                   parent’s house

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Kate Kadleck is a writer and relationship therapist based in Dubuque, Iowa. She earned her MS in marriage and family therapy from Northwestern University and is the author of a chapbook, Corpse Pose (Bottlecap Press, 2025). Kate also has a poetry collection, Not Quite Medusa, forthcoming from Kelsay Books. She is a poetry reader for wildscape. literary journal, and her work can be found or is forthcoming in places such as Wild Roof Journal, phoebe, Outskirts Literary Journal, The Turning Leaf Journal, boats against the current, Ivy Literary Journal, and Rust & Moth. Kate was a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s Hurt & Healing Prize as well as Four Tulips’ Fantastic Mischief Contest, and her second chapbook was longlisted for C&R Press’s Winter Soup Bowl Chapbook Awards.