The Day the Night Terrors Finally Stopped by Jessica Nordell

“There is a land of the living and a land of the lost, and the bridge is fine as a child’s ribbon.”

The Day the Night Terrors Finally Stopped
by Jessica Nordell

was a Saturday
in May.

The ground thickly wet,
black and stamped with clover.

On foot, and with some trepidation, the two
set off to tour 
their neighborhood,

which was not the underworld,
not one neighbor trapped forever in hell.

The minatory chorus 
grew sparse

and ornamental.

A shimmer rolled through the aspen
like a veil,

and the journey ended as it began,
in a house at the edge of a cutbank,

where a woman
and a man
learned one more lesson:

there is a land of the living
and a land

of the lost, and the bridge
is fine as a child’s ribbon, and the river

is dark
as the face of God

First published in The Yale Review.