Emily Hockaday
Last Breath
I think of my own breath
and what would happen
if I exhaled in space. It is not
romantic, but I can’t help
feeling drawn to it. The inky dark,
the utter quiet, objects moving—
and me one of them. Out in
the Kuiper Belt, planetoids
school like fish. They glitter—
frozen ornaments moving
in a loose, massive donut.
Here at home, my orbit
is getting tighter, smaller,
less important. Sixty-three days
of isolation, and I am hardening
to ice. My atmosphere is thinning,
it is harder and harder
to draw breath. I am
cold. My daughter places hot hands
on my cheeks. She says,
I’m not sad. Every time she asks
if the germs are still out,
if the playgrounds are closed,
I lose more heat. I don’t know
how to keep spinning. I’m losing sight
of what I should be orbiting.
Which way is the Sun?
—Submitted on
Emily Hockaday is the author of Vocabulary (Red Bird Chaps, forthcoming), Space on Earth (Grey Book Press, 2019), Ophelia: A Botanist’s Guide (Zoo Cake Press, 2015), What We Love & Will Not Give Up (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), and Starting a Life (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Newtown Literary, The Maine Review, Salt Hill, and other journals. Hockaday is an associate editor at Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Based in Queens, New York, she is online at emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.
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