By Holly Day

I feel the wings flutter under my skin as I tell them

about my childhood, about how things were before

I had children of my own. I hint at the type of insect I was

make it more beautiful—I was a butterfly, a damselfly

a fluorescent leaf-hopper, something amazing.

 

Because they’re my children, I can tell they believe me

that right now, they’re imagining me as

a lime-green lunar moth, wings soft as down

not the chitinous beetle I really was

brown and dull and unimportant,

scuttling from one crack to the next.

 

 

 

Holly Day Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).

 

 

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This