Easter Sunday
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how - James Russell Lowell 1. After a rigid winter with too many days spent in classrooms, the faint presence of birds disturbs the windowsills. Trees open their mouths, fine-cut leaves cup air— careful, the way a woman slides a hand beneath her child’s oval skull and lifts his face to hers. 2. I have been too loyal to grief. I have given corners to darkness, allowed myself to think love shrinks, cold. Now when sorrow answers it doesn’t matter. I tell my own stories, place colored eggs under shrubs, behind stones, coddle a few in a flowerpot. One by one, children take them back, heads tempera bulbs in morning’s convocation. Joy scrambles sadness. Lord, break this day over my head. Light sticks to me like yolk.
Erica Goss is the author of Night Court, winner of the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Her flash essay, “Just a Big Cat,” was one of Creative Nonfiction’s top-read stories for 2021. Recent and upcoming publications include The Georgia Review, Oregon Humanities, Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Spillway, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and Critical Read. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, from 2013-2016. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches, writes and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.
