Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Analog SF, Cardinal Sins, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and The Muse Writers Center in Virginia.

Fast

When you fall in love in space, it’s under every star you ever saw

as a child from your bedroom window, the moon

swinging gigantic behind you, bigger than it ever was

in a Dean Martin ballad. You cannot get closer to another person

than here, a thousand miles from Earth 

in a closet-sized room with only a thin sheet of ceramic-coated metal

keeping you from exploding into ice crystals 

and drifting off into space. 

There is no room for doubt. There is no question of trust. 



It’s nothing like being back on Earth, trapped by gravity

the memories of floating in mid-air held only by one another 

fading fast. But it’s the sort of memory that sustains you long enough

to think that getting behind the wheel and driving hours and hours

under the blazing hot summer sun to recapture a married man’s love

wearing a diaper under your street clothes so you never have to stop 

is a good idea, no matter what the consequences.

Temp  

There’s a sad lady at work and I tell her she should cheer up

no one wants to hear a sad voice on the phone when they call up

no one wants to walk by her cubicle and see a sad face.  I tell her

there’s a fresh pot of coffee in the break room, she should have a cup

it’ll perk her right up. 



She starts to tell me about how she misses her baby at home

she just had him a few weeks ago, but because she’s just a temp

she can’t take the time off to stay at home with him

her boyfriend’s at home watching her baby, she hopes

everything’s okay, I ask her

if she wants me to bring her a cup of coffee because I’m going back there

anyway. 



When I bring her her coffee back she’s still sad looking, and I give her the cup 

and she says “thank you” but she doesn’t mean it, there’s no smile. 

I want to tell her that it’s much easier to keep a man when you look happy

and if this is how she looks when she goes home, there’s a chance

she might come home one day to find a note and an empty house

but I stop myself because these thoughts are for me only.



All day long, I sneak peeks at her to see 

if I can catch her looking cheerful, listen to her voice when she talks on the phone

and she says the words right but her voice is too full of thoughts

customers gotta know something’s wrong with the woman when they call us up. 

During lunch, I ask some of the other ladies how long this temp’s going to be with us

tiptoe around how she’s just really bringing me down

and I’m so relieved when they say this is her last day. 

            Headstone

The insurance salesman walks us through the funeral process

tells us they will pay for any kind of funeral we want

when my husband dies. “Any kind,” she says, then winks at my husband

as if to say she knows he’s a humble man, he won’t want

some New Orleans-style funeral, a horse-drawn carriage dragging his coffin

down the street, anything more complicated than

maybe an open-casket wake with coffee and sandwiches in the corner.

“We only do this for employees at your level of seniority,” she adds

as if implying that I, too,  might want to jump in on that free funeral plan

and I look like someone who might insist the company pay for more

than just a hole in the ground and a bouquet of cheap flowers.



I nod and smile politely because honestly, 

I don’t give a damn what’s done with my body when I’m gone, 

but in my head I am already planning one hell of a funeral for my husband

I’m going to have him cremated and shoved into a Roman candle 

or loaded into a rocket and shot clean into space

watch him and his ashes explode in a cascade of sparkling lights over the ocean

so bright and beautiful that even dolphins and sharks will poke their head out of the water

wonder at the noise and the lights

because I’ll be damned if I let this free funeral go to waste

not after thirty years 

of watching him die in a dead-end government job.