he tells me I remind him of a beached whale lying in bed in the morning I close my eyes and imagine myself being picked apart by the claws of tiny sand crabs burrowed into by thin red beach worms gobbets of flesh ripped
from my carcass by flocks of sea gulls luring even the raccoons down from the stubby forest following the shore. he asks me if I feel ashamed of myself and I don’t answer because I feel dead already I’m too busy
imagining the shock of girl scout troops stumbling across my massive corpse in the shallows the feel of their tiny hands on my body joined by the larger hands of Greenpeace workers and passing tree huggers as they try to push me back into the water
hoping somehow that this half-eaten cold and lifeless body might magically come back to life and swim away if only they could get me back into the water.
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).