Robin Kathaas
Robin Kathaas (any pronouns) is a Belgian writer who now lives, loves, and laughs in the UK.
He has reluctantly created an Instagram at @robin.kathaas.
She dislikes writing bios and has a cat named Orlando, who is a far more interesting creature than the poet.
Teresa on The Beach
Parasols sprout from the beach like so many stakes,
equipped entirely for the wrong monster. Life is perfect,
of course, but if I were to be attacked right now,
it would be by a sea monster diving up from beneath
and clutching my legs, with talons like scissors
and tongues (yes, plural - she was gifted) like uncut diamonds.
This monster would be called Teresa, just as Teresa was
when she was my high school classmate:
sweet, young, and tragically homophobic.
Teresa, who insisted I should get changed in the boy’s room before I knew that
I wanted to get changed in the boys’ room. My irrepressible tits, her hormones,
their hormones, my hormones: all bubbling and toiling and troubling away.
In the end, only the toilet got to see me naked. That pesky little lady
glaring down at me, her triangle bottom the result of an inscrutable equation.
She was my best friend and my worst enemy, just like
Teresa, who I only think of when I am on my back, floating
on the blue-green waves of a sea that she has never swum in.
A victory, a loss, a small hope: that she might surface here, and see
me: boys’ trunks around my waist,
stubbornly rectangular.