A Second Pandemic Easter

The baby, who was not here last year,
smiles her delight and points out the window,
the same one I sat outside at Christmas
when I could not taste my coffee.

I drank it anyway, for warmth and
normalcy, my numb fingers wrapped
around the mug. My mother’s puffy coat
melted into the shape of the heater coils.

This morning, too, we can see our breath.
Still, wunderkind, my eldest child,
you tell us we must come outside
to see what the Bunny has done.

You are suspicious. Perhaps your parents,
not some cunicular phantom,
gathered your stuffed rabbits and
assembled them among the flowers.

They peek from behind pots of
perennials we will plant
as living reminders of
these years we have survived.

Not unscathed, we lament receding
gums and extra pounds, gray hair
and everything else that comes
with chronically high cortisol.

Somewhere along the way, I lost
the point to my right canine.
Skin protests being cleaned this much.
Fatigue is a constant companion.

When the op-ed columnist wonders
Why Is Jesus Still Wounded
After His Resurrection?
I know the answer.

I have seen how trauma lives in the body.
I can testify that wounds are holy,
sometimes redemptive.
Let us remember this

As we tend scarred lungs and swollen hearts.
Let us bow our heads, witness to
the ravages of cancer that marched unchecked
through stages as the pandemic raged.

In the midst, child, you say,
Come outside! Come and see!
Insist on wonder. Do not cease
to marvel at this wounded world.

Megan Lloyd Joiner is a healthcare chaplain and the mother of two daughters. Having recently completed a two-year fellowship in compassion-centered spiritual health at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute, she now works with both Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta (UUCA). Megan is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York City and served in hospitals in New York City and congregations in Connecticut before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 2019. A selection of her poems recently appeared in Shelter in This Place: Meditations on 2020, published by Skinner House Books.