Fingers Pull a Shoulder Strap Down
Pen Pal
The End
Where We've Been
Fingers Pull a Shoulder Strap Down
My ex-husband hands our son his car keys
to play with, tells him the roads are icy outside,
dangerous, that it’ll be dangerous for him to drive home.
He doesn’t look at me while he says this, eyes
on the child shaking the keyring noisily
standing only in his diaper. “I could die,”
he says in his best
I’m-talking-to-a-baby voice
“I could drive straight into a tree or a telephone pole
hit another car and die.”
“Silly daddy,” says our toddler, delighted
with the keys. He shakes them so gently
they sound like music, the different shapes and sizes
each seem to have their own sound. Underneath it all,
my ex continues to drone on about insurance policies,
my tiny apartment, how things could be
so much better for us
if he just died. So this, this moment, this
is what finally comes of best friends
clothes torn off and tossed in the corner
arms and legs entwined as though magnetized
full of dreams so real
it couldn’t have happened any other way
this is how it all ends.
My friend has been divided into perforated sheets of new stories
I tell her how I’m pretty here despite having being quartered myself
about the monsters that are loose in my bedroom again
the obscenities that come to the table at lunch.
“I guess I liked to be scared. There’s no other reason for my brutal sophistry
and tearing my hair out in mock terror is fun
and ripping my brain into confetti is fun
I enjoyed nightmares when I was a child, and this where I belong.”
Huge fish with sharp teeth complain about their weight
tell stories and poems that have been gnawed in half.
My last nightmare was almost as thin as I used to be.
I tell her how I’m pretty here when she sends me pictures of her:
Posing on the beach with nubile Afrikaners.
Washing oil off of penguins and seals.
In bed with her new cat.
People lurk like shadows in the city zoo.
Creatures stand mummified in cages.
A sign by the freeway says subversives are welcome here.
Afraid of losing ourselves, we embrace
the modern world’s audio gospel. The voices say
the world is sterile of life and Heaven is full.
People lurk like shadows in the city’s zoos and
in the sewers the politicians will eventually rename.
We are all rotten apples now.
we rolled the windows
up against the rain
and my father said
“I wonder what that
rat-bastard husband
of yours is doing
right now” and I just
looked out through the glass
and said nothing, watched
countryside slide past
in varying shades
of green. behind me
the tired baby cried
in his car seat, tired
of being strapped in
for six hours straight and
I wanted to cry
but I don’t do that.
outside the car, corn
unfolded under
the onslaught of rain
sparse trees danced in waves
of rippling light
and everything I
was going to be
faded into black
far, far behind us.
Holly Day was born in Hereford, Texas, “The Town Without a Toothache.” She and her family currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she teaches writing classes at the Loft Literary Center. Her published books include the nonfiction books Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, and Piano All-in-One for Dummies, and the poetry books Late-Night Reading for Hardworking Construction Men (The Moon Publishing) and The Smell of Snow (ELJ Publications). Her needlepoints and beadwork have recently appeared on the covers of The Grey Sparrow Journal, QWERTY Magazine, and Kiki Magazine.
