You know the story: The son returns, and now, a feast.
The brother reanimates, whole again. The daughter resurfaces,
and with her, flowers. All retrieved from a supernatural place,
but not
for any supernatural reason. Only because someone needed them,
and grief is too much. Miracles that are more human upon inspection.
You know the story: the children are restless in the garden,
but not
for want of food or love. Only because no animal can perfectly
avoid itself. Even ants will begin to groom themselves if given a mirror.
They follow their own scent to find the way home again,
but not
like the robin this morning, colliding with the window, tempted
by a misplaced reflection. Upon watching her collapse in the dirt,
the first instinct was a tenderness: Would she fly again?
But the answer was hungry and familiar: With these wings, what omen?
Emily Stoddard’s writing appears in Radar, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Ruminate, Dark Mountain, New Poetry from the Midwest, Cold Mountain Review, Menacing Hedge, and elsewhere. She is an affiliate of the Amherst Writers & Artists Method and leads writing workshops online and in her studio based in Michigan. More at www.emilystoddard.com.