Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams
Weathering
Most everyone tucked away safely
in their lives. I am out in this light
winter rain making the same mistakes.
The heart sleeps, wakes as hooves
and dust. A confusion of wildebeest
rushing the river. Who can say which
part of any migration will drown.
The heart knows how to surrender,
lay her parentheses of horns in the grass.
The heart has seen, too, what hunger
leaves strewn on the muddy banks.
Dull-flanked, belly-up. Don’t look.
Out in the slipped light, I am gathering
into a downpour—and every one of me
would prefer to pound this earth alone.
Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams is the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Orion, the Oxford American, StoryQuarterly, the Southern Humanities Review, The Pinch, the Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. Originally from the Pacific Islands, she now lives in North Carolina and teaches for UNC Wilmington. Find her socials at: @hannahdelacruzabrams (Meta platforms), @hannahabrams.bsky.social (Bluesky), @hannahdelacruzabrams (Substack).