How to Run
by Emily Hockaday
When I say I want to go to the Moon, I mean I can see it there. It is tangible. Why won’t you let me reach out and touch you? When you say Your daughter, you mean, why aren’t you better at this? When I say Put your hand on my back, I am having an existential moment, I am looking at the Moon knowing I will never be there looking at the Earth and it seems very unfair, and then, looking at the baby monitor, while you do (finally!) put your hand on my back, I start to wonder: are you right? Do I deserve to hear your daughter in that tone of voice, just because I left the baby gate open, this once, and you caught her splashing her hand in the toilet? If we were on the Moon, there wouldn’t be any toilet water to splash in. When I say I’m doing my best, I hope it’s true. I hope you believe me. I really hope that I am.
Emily Hockaday’s first full-length collection Naming the Ghost was out with Cornerstone Press September 2022. Her second collection is forthcoming October 2023 from Harbor Editions. Emily is the author of five chapbooks and coeditor of the horror collection Terror at the Crossroads. Her work has been featured in print and online, and she can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “How to Run”? Like the speaker of the poem, I also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the Moon. All of space, really. (I work in science fiction.) It’s wild that we live on this one planet, when there’s an infinite Universe all around us! I wrote this poem after leaving one of the baby gates open in a rush (although I don’t believe there was any toilet-splashing). You’d be surprised how hard it is to use the bathroom and remember to close a gate while parenting with an early toddler who needs constant supervision. I don’t know if peeing with the door open is fascinating per say, but all of parenting feels superhuman in the midst of it.
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