I Go Up and Other Poems

By Holly Day

I Go Up

Since we can’t go out, I go up, bring my flashlight with me to the roof
the highest point of the house, shine it up. If there is someone up there
that can see me, trapped in my house, sitting on my roof
flashing messages in Morse Code, binary, back and forth and up and down
if there’s some curious creature hiding just beyond the clouds
spying on us from somewhere beyond the stars
come and get me, come on down.
My husband opens the bedroom window, cranes his head up to look at me
shouts at me to get off the house, come back down, come to bed
I must be crazy to be sitting way up there. I tell him I’m not
coming back in the house again, I’ve been trapped in the house for weeks and weeks
and the only place I have left for me
is up, as high as I can climb, he should come up with me
maybe two flashlights will be brighter, work better.
I, too, can relate to being in a spaceship hurtling through space
with no outlet for exploration but the laundry chute and closets packed with old toys
I will tell whatever traveler I hail from my rooftop perch
that they won’t have to keep me caged or tranquilized
to keep me from trying to escape into the void of space
I’m already so good
at just sitting in place.

Don’t

Don’t touch me when I’m dreaming about space I’ll tell you
when I plan to dream about escaping don’t touch me
when I throw my arms out wide and dream about hurtling through
the clouds the sky the thin edge of the atmosphere
no I know I can’t actually fly into space but don’t touch me
don’t wake me just go sleep on the couch or something
Don’t stop me when I start confessing things in my sleep
but don’t listen to my secrets because I know they come out don’t
touch me when I start talking about running away don’t touch me
when I throw my arms out and start dreaming about space
don’t tell me I’m talking in my sleep again just
grab a pillow and a blanket and go to sleep on the couch.
You might as well get comfortable
I’m going to be this way for a while.

Invincible

My grandfather’s earliest memory
was being held around the waist and lifted up
to kiss his newborn brother’s cheek
before the coffin lid was closed, he says he still remembers that little face.
My husband’s grandmother
lost her youngest sister at the same time.
She always said that her sister was the best one of them all
out of all of those kids, she should have been the one that survived.
When my grandfather and my husband’s grandmother
get together, all they talk about is the people they’ve lost.
The lists grow longer and longer every year until it seems like
they must be the most invincible people on the planet
Invulnerable to all of the wars and plagues that ravaged the world
all around them as they grew up and grew old,
two impervious beings that will last forever
as civilization crumbles to dust and bones in unsettled piles
all around their feet.

Small

My world has become so small that it can be contained
inside the shadowy, leaf-covered burrow of a velvety gray shrew
its tiny nose thrusting and grunting in the dark
is louder than my thoughts of the future. I have decided to center myself
in the breath of fireflies flickering over the warm hollow in the yard
in the gasps of tiny frogs as they leap across the sidewalk
in the anticipatory snorts of baby mice nuzzled against their mother’s chest.
This is exactly how much space I want to take up
as much of the universe I want to displace with my presence.

The Unspoken Words

Beneath my fingertips, lichen feels like Braille
soft and uneven and full of stories I wish I could read.
Some lichen blooms in the spring, or after a rainstorm
pink flowers so tiny they look like dots of splattered paint.
I wish I was small enough to see if they had a smell.
Little green frogs, no bigger than my thumbnail
crowd around the rocks covered with lichen
chase the miniscule flies drawn to the flowers
maybe the frogs know if the flowers have a scent.
By summer, the lichen will have burned to orange
the moss will be flat against the rock and any secret messages
hidden in the brachiating fronds will have disappeared for the year.
I pretend that the words written in the lichen
are there just for me, that someone
is trying to talk to me against this rock
In the language of abrupt flowers and springy moss.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, The Hong Kong Review, and Appalachian Journal, and her hobbies include kicking and screaming at vending machines.