Jube by Holly Day

We close our faces and open the door. One after another, people
come into our house, faces open in grief, ask us
if there’s anything they can do. I take my husband’s hand
in my own, pat the top of it as if I can reassure him,
as if I am capable of reassurance, I pretend I am a rock

painted brilliant in swirls of peacock feathers and greeting card graffiti
closed off to the grief, I can do this.

I keep quiet as boxes are packed, as things are put into them,
I don’t look at those things, I don’t know what they are. People
sweep through my house like some terrible wave
of staged grief, I don’t believe them, someone
says they know how I feel, that things are going to get better,
I don’t believe them.



Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa 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).