The First Day of Spring

by Nancy Tucker

When you did bad things like that the keepers descended, one for each limb, held you so tight you couldn’t move. I did lots of bad things. It felt nice to be held. I liked going limp in their arms and hearing them say, “There. Well done for calming down. Good girl, Chrissie. Good girl.” It was almost like I wasn’t bad at all.

Anyway, that was how I knew being dead wasn’t forever. Not always. People who talked about dying as if it was forever were either lying or stupid, because I knew two people who definitely, definitely came back from being dead. One was Da and the other was Jesus.