Easter morning
Early morning glows
Bluish and pale
In the window
Rain so gentle
The birds sing over it.
My children sleep
With smooth cheeks
And soft breath
The sun rises
Like a prayer.
Step gently
In this old house
Speak softly
If you must
Or not at all.
Please don’t chase away
The dead
Who still roam freely
in my dreams.
How To Make a Bed
First, you must find the strength
to rise out of it.
This is not easy.
You have been alone before
But this time it is different.
The silence sounds different.
You know what awaits you in the house
And today you want
No part of it.
Your side is warm and molded to
The shape of your body
His side is still
Perfectly made and
cold to the touch.
Your dog is what finally
Gets you on your feet.
You shake the covers.
A few crumbs fall out.
Lemon cake while you read last night,
A guilty pleasure.
Then you see one hit the floor.
Small, triangular in shape
With a logo of some sort.
His guitar pick.
What you wanted – and didn’t want –
To find here.
Just a day like any other.
Him sitting on the side of the bed,
Singing and playing
In soft morning sunlight,
Santo & Johnny.
You’re laughing as you recognize the tune.
What’s it called, you ask him.
He grins in his sideways style.
Sleepwalk, he says, still strumming.
But staring at you.
You start to get up
To make the coffee
And he pulls you back.
And the bed is once again,
A floatation device,
A spaceship
A cloud
An oasis
An escape
Command central for the day.
The place you can
Think and
Rest and
Read and
Sing and
Love.
How can you make it, without him?
Interstate
The knock at the door
Of your post-divorce
particle board
apartment.
The woman, uncertain
Holding your fake leather wallet.
She thrusts it toward you.
“I found this” she stammers.
“In the middle of the highway”
You look at her but can’t form the words.
It is your wallet.
Everything you need to get by.
Left on top of the car while you were getting gas.
“It had emptied out” she says.
“I had to chase after a few of the cards and things.”
But she thinks it is all there.
You check, and it is.
All there.
The thought of this woman, this stranger
Dodging oncoming traffic
To recover your twenty-dollar wallet,
With the maxed credit cards
And food stamps and pennies,
Moves you.
Thank you is not enough.
Yet she shakes her head
When you offer reward.
“This is going to sound crazy” she says,
And it does.
“I am supposed to tell you
Everything will be OK”
She doesn’t know why she feels this urge.
She isn’t even sure
that there is a God.
And with that, suddenly
There is.
The universe has seen the
Carnage in your heart
And it knows grace
better than you.
It knows
That you will heal.
Amy Claire Massingale is a Pacific Northwest-based author and poet writing on love, loss and family.