Assumption

Hands

The hand pressed down
through water hazy with ice,
pressing down,
pushing down.
Her mouth opened:
frozen hell burned her throat,
slid into her lungs
like molten lead.

Urgent splay of fingers,
black against the white light
(tunnel? sun? didn’t matter),
the thick, turgid fluid
forming delicate vortices
around each displacing digit—
dying, her eyes could see
their traceries as they moved
through space and time:

After a lifetime spent assuming
that every hand was against her,
it never occurred to her
that the hand was there
to pull her up.