“Good Friday 2020,” “Holy Saturday 2020,” and “Easter Sunday 2020,” by Kris Yee

Kris Yee is an educator who specializes in fairy tales, logic, and community. He likes to dabble in poetry and photography, and he's currently working on an EP with his band, Pidgeoto, and a fantasy novel. He lives in Houston, Texas and works for the Saint Constantine School.

Twitter: @kristofurkey
Instagram: @kristofurkey

Good Friday 2020

It is a little death to sit indoors
for weeks in weakness, measuring your sin,
to stare at what you are and who you’ve been
to hear the telltale thump beneath the floor.

I don’t–Oh, God—believe the Savior felt
the leaden weight of shame inside His gut.
A Son of Seth, He never knew just what
it meant to bring your best and fail. The guilt…

For He who knows no sin can’t know the taste
of “Mea culpa” scraped along the teeth,
can he? Can He whose gentle spirit sheathed
the sword of Peter make my hatred chaste?

These little deaths need resurrections, too.
I pray that I can pray to be made new.

Holy Saturday 2020

Resurrection dawns
tomorrow. Nevertheless,
Lazarus still weeps.

Easter 2020

I wonder what this Resurrection means
when we, its proud proclaimers, stay entombed.
I search for pious words
in weakness, watch, and pray:
If death is dead then whence all this decay?

A disembodied Body gathers here
in hundreds of its living—living?—rooms.
Arrhythmic hymns resound
with glitches and delays.
If death is dead then whence all this decay?

I wonder, was that first Sunday the same
with Your disciples hid inside their homes?
The prophecies felt false.
All hope had been misplaced.
Is that why Mary couldn’t see Your face?

If death is dead then whence all this decay?