Consider the Hands that Write this Letter

creative commons

Consider the Hands that Write this Letter

By Aracelis Girmay

 

after Marina Wilson

 

Consider the hands

that write this letter.

The left palm pressed flat against the paper,

as it has done before, over my heart,

in peace or reverence

to the sea or some beautiful thing

I saw once, felt once: snow falling

like rice flung from the giants' wedding,

or the strangest birds. & consider, then,

the right hand, & how it is a fist,

within which a sharpened utensil,

similar to the way I've held a spade,

match to the wick, the horse's reins,

loping, the very fists

I've seen from the roads to Limay & Estelí.

For years, I have come to sit this way:

one hand open, one hand closed,

like a farmer who puts down seeds & gathers up

the food that comes from that farming.

Or, yes, it is like the way I've danced

with my left hand opened around a shoulder

& my right hand closed inside

of another hand. & how

I pray, I pray for this

to be my way: sweet

work alluded to in the body's position

to its paper:

left hand, right hand

like an open eye, an eye closed:

one hand flat against the trapdoor,

the other hand knocking, knocking.