Issue 7 | Summer 2010

Hyacinth Girl

From her mouth flow apple seeds &

hyacinth blossoms. Her long legs bow

when she climbs, maniacal—

to the treetops. To us, she is so

much longer up there. We fear her

rough fall and we beg her to return.

And she slinks down to earth

from her treetop, past cups of sweet tea

made from hyacinth leaves. She stops—

pressing her palms into the cool earth.

Her long fingers dig down.

Fingers that once fashioned clouds

to discs, words to poems, and pointed

us toward heaven. Her hands are shovels

that dig her way past normal into

the earth. Beneath us, she cannot feel

her fingers. She cuts them off, mantles

them under a tree’s roots. Her lungs fill

with chestnuts and autumn. We follow

handprints she left behind, deep

depressions of palms into soil. We beg

her to return, call her name in earth-colored

whispers. She calls back & with each breath

a hyacinth blooms beneath our feet.

 

Filed under: Poetry