Synkroniciti is excited to welcome back poet and writer Stacie Eirich, now based in Houston, who closes our “Recovery” issue with two poems. “April, in the after” was one of our contest finalists and is full of wisdom gleaned from a journey with cancer. Stacie reminds us that recovery isn’t all triumph and joy. “Instead, the better after isn’t what we imagined./ It is complex and muddied and full of a nagging sadness, a cacophony/ of pouring rain with each next loss: of friends, of friendships, of/ intimacy, of safe spaces, of what is or once was home, of /belonging, of who we once were. The fallout of the after/ is real and lonely, it hangs in the air silent and loud,/ an emptiness, a hollowness that isn’t filled by the sun/ or the blooms, the green or the birds or a lilting spring breeze.”
The vulnerability of this poem is disarming, both comforting and disquieting. If you have ever gone through a recovery, you know that you are not the same person on the other side, that things are lost and gained and bargains are made with the future to keep us alive in the present. It’s comforting to know that others have the same experience, but it’s also melancholy.
“Sun Salutation” turns inward knowledge into outward blessing. Post-recovery we are distilled and more fully individuated, more of who we are and less willing to waste our time on things that don’t fit us. We are faced with “monsters dressed as men,/ parading in their black ties and tailored, starched shirts, proclaiming that there is only/ one way to live, to pray, to love, to think, to be—when before me all I see/ is the muddied earth strewn with the many-colored shoes of many-colored peoples,/ their stories strewn across centuries, their songs echoing in the raindrops…” Stacie’s voice is conversational yet musical, her heart open and full. I could not think of a better pair of poems to end this issue and show us how to implement what it has taught us.
Read Stacie’s remarkable poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Stacie Eirich is a mother of two, writer and singer near Houston, Texas. She has written poetry, short fiction and nonfiction published in literary journals, magazines and anthologies. Her latest book, Hope Like Sunlight, published in December 2024, is an illustrated memoir of her family’s journey to a cure for their child from pediatric brain cancer. All proceeds from the book go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital & Ronald McDonald House; find it on Amazon.