Your wife invited me over to dye Easter eggs. A striped evening of pastels to match the sunset.
Fingers pinking up, greening, purpling, blueing. She tips a dark wineglass at me—down my throat. She drinks too. You drink more.
Our hands pulse and wrinkle vinegar.
It’s all very Catholic.
We dance. We all dance.
It’s midnight when she hides the eggs. A child’s game; we’re kids again. Each turquoise yellow red spot poking out like rolled up ancient clues. We hunt.
The last egg we find in the basement, in the same instant. Your hand touches mine. You kiss the top of my head. I take the egg. We stay there, just a moment, unmoving.
I dash back up the stairs—put on the show, wave the egg over my head and crow, I won I won I won.
She laughs. I get a prize. Some little basket with plastic grass, a plastic egg, jellybeans. You two go to bed together.
In the morning, I wake up before you and help her peel the eggs. The shells lacquer my fingertips. The skin greys and pulls off. We dice them together, little eyes, whites and yellows cubed into the bowl you got on your honeymoon. She doesn’t know the truth emerged last night like Christ coming out of the tomb. Truth is yolk, bled from a cracked egg.
J. G. Russell teaches high school literature in Troy, Michigan. Previously, her work has been published in Belletrist Magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, and Swallow the Moon.
Image: “The Hunt in Merchantville” by Daniel Nester
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