bells and cheese pascha

It's raining in Connecticut: forsythia, grass and sky all drenched in gray.

It's also Pascha in Connecticut. And in New York, Chicago, Portland, Tokyo, Boston, and Moscow. Toru awakes me calling from Japan, "Christ is Risen!" he proclaims, and then inquires as to what I'm eating. "I'm in bed," I say. I yawn and think of my friends celebrating Pascha in Illinois, Portland, Finland, Oxford. I squint at the rainy windows, and then I think about cheese pascha.

Nostalgia is off at church doggedly directing choir, I lie in her bed under layers of down. I remember the way the church bells burst life into the sleepy church. My mind wanders past dreams—a boat, a wave, the whales—and then returns to cheese pascha. I don't think she has any. She doesn't have any milk either, she never does. But she has kielbasi, kulich, red eggs, horseradish, pickled tomatoes. It's too early in the morning for savory Russian food. But kulich will be good, buttered with honey or marmalade. It's a wet Pascha morning, cold and bright.

Last night, when the bells rang at midnight, it was as though they rang from inside me.