Sand Woman Poem by Kim Hyesoon

A woman was lifted from the sand.
She was perfectly intact, not even a split hair.

When he left they say she didn't eat or sleep.
She didn't die
although she kept her eyes shut
kept her breath held.

People came and took her.
They stripped her and placed her in saltwater
spread her legs cut her hair and opened up her chest.

They say he died in battle
so she ran far away from home
holding her breath.
She wouldn't let it out into the world
and wouldn't open her eyes though knives flew in and out of her.

They sewed her up, laid her in a glass casket.
The man she was waiting for never came,
though fingers came at her from all directions.

Each day I looked down and watched
the buried woman lifted from the sand,
her two hands dumped on paper.
I wanted to take a camel and go far away.

The woman followed me in every dream
and her shut eyes would open in a flash.
Under her eyelids it was deeper, wider than the desert's night sky.