someday we’ll find joy in New Orleans

by Kate Kadleck

My heart is a shotgun house

with the cracked pastel exterior

of macarons – pistachio, lavender,

passionfruit, rose water.

Its jewel-toned rooms huddle

together, murmur about the murder

that stained their floors and how,

ever since, the cottage swells & contracts

like an organ            ism.

I saved you my favorite chamber.

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). Her work can be found or is forthcoming in places such as Ivy Literary Journal, Rust & Moth, Moss Puppy Magazine, Cary Grant Died Here, wildscape., Tenth Muse, Thimble, The Indianapolis Review, The Garlic Press, and One Hand Clapping.