Miryam

by Hannah Hinsch

Bitter as her name 
she spoke and flowed 
black as pitch, strong enough  
to hold the rift in her  
aloft with hollow dreams of water. 
Cleft with wind and song, she turned—her whole body 
a shore,  
a salted rim of sea 
the length of a reed—the one he breathed 
where horse and rider coalesced in blood  
and foam from lips  
the moment death was sung. 
But for all her words, she never knew him  
face to face 
until he met her  
in desert warm, at the shimmered edge 
of her private grove, bruised and sweet and singing  
in a form that made even the weakest part of her  
drawn together like water, like song  
fragile woven  
strong as lilies 
falling softly to seafloor— 
a timbrel heart, a line in his own hand 
she had walked before  
and remembered, 
the place where all words come 
close and mended clean as skin 
as scar.  

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Hannah Hinsch writes to be with God. A current MFA candidate, her poetry and prose begins at the meeting place of word and being, the image and its attendant charge, a risen heat that sends a word in time and place and body, whether on the salt-soaked shores of Gig Harbor or the monsoon-warm of Santa Fe - and the grace to see God standing there. Find more of her work at hannahhinsch.com.