Easter
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
My mother woke us that Sunday – her voice
a bell proclaiming spring. We rose
diving into our clothes, newly bought.
We took turns standing before mirrors,
combing, staring at our new selves.
Sinless from forty days of desert,
sinless from good confessions, we
drove to church in a red pickup, bright
and red and waxed for the special
occasion. Clean, polished as apples,
the yellow-dressed girls in front
with Mom and Dad; the boys in back,
our hair blowing free in the warming
wind. Winter gone away. At Mass,
the choir singing loud: ragged
notes from ragged angel’s voices;
ancient hymns sung in crooked Latin.
The priest, white robed, raised his palms
toward God, opened his mouth in awe:
“Alleluia!” The unspoken word of Lent
let loose in flight. Alleluia and incense
rising, my mother wiping her tears
from words she’d heard; my brother and I
whispering names of statues lining
the walls of the church. Bells ringing,
Mass ending, we running to the truck,
shiny as shoes going dancing. Dad
driving us to see my grandmother. There,
at her house, I asked about the new word
I’d heard: resurrection. “Death,
death,” she said, her hands moving downward,
“the cross – that is death.” And then she
laughed: “The dead will rise.” Her upturned
palms moved skyward as she spoke. “The dead
will rise.” She moved her hands toward me,
wrapped my face with touches, and
laughed again. The dead will rise.
![[photo]](http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/lewisandclark/buildings/Gre1_JEFF.jpg)
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