Pruniferous
60 Years
I dream of them hanging all over my body, tiny globes
filled with half-formed children destined to end too soon
such tiny hands. If only the weather had help up, if only these early springs
wouldn’t turn into sudden frost, kill off crop after crop
of the babies I desperately want to bear.
My husband tosses in his sleep, mutters about work, and I
whisper the good parts of my dreams to him, the ones where
all the flowers survive to become old men and women, tell him
I am covered in children, that eventually one of these tiny flowers inside me
will survive even the strongest winter storm.
she pushes him dutifully
up and down the aisles of the supermarket
the wheels of his wheelchair
screaming
“he beats me, you know”
she whispers
Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school district. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai'i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream, and she is a recent recipient of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, German,
Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.
