Early Morning Day of Departure, and: At Five Months, and: On The Third Day

Abstract

Early Morning Day of Departure, and: At Five Months, and: On The Third Day A. Kat Reece (bio) Early Morning Day of Departure Alex and I creep past the nurses’ station, the plastic Christmas tree, clear across the maternity ward, to the room where our daughter lies swaddled on a guest bed next to her adoptive parents. All are sound asleep, and we take great care lifting her off the blanket, slipping out unnoticed, back across the maternity ward to the room where she was born and won’t stop crying now for anything. Alex wants me to nurse her, promising everything will be fine, wearing that we have every right expression. [End Page 16] Untying the back of my hospital gown, peeling it off my shoulders, Alex draws the curtain, lays her heavy against my heart. At Five Months The photo is one that Alex took by a window in the condo I shared with my father. I stand with my shirt pulled halfway up and the blinds half shut, half protecting the secret. But one long arm of sun sneaks past and palms a peculiar fist-size rise, like a hand grenade between my hips, sewn beneath my skin. And on my lips are words that might be this is the waythe world ends. [End Page 17] On The Third Day Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out. luke 8:1–2 She’ll remember how her hands would hardly close around the jars of oil, loose from days of grief and fasting and how, on her way to the cave where he was buried, she tripped on a mud brick in the middle of the path but somehow managed to keep her footing and go on, how her mind kept drifting back to the first day she met him, how strange she’d felt, and embarrassed, that when she saw his face, she came so close to calling him “Mother.” And then, [End Page 18] how that changed, how she never quite knew what to call him . . . And then a sadness, heavy and cold as the stone [End Page 19] A. Kat Reece A. Kat Reece received her mfa in creative writing from North Carolina State University last spring. She lives in Durham with her husband, stepson, and their two black cats. Copyright © 2016 University of Nebraska Press