the annunciation

I. there’s this girl.

there’s this girl, and she lives in a village that barely earns the name—not even five hundred souls, living off rock and scrub, but there are flocks of goats in the hills and one synagogue hewn from stone, older than she has memory.

nothing good comes from galilee, they say, but her mother is there, and her brothers, the half dozen girls she has know since they were all babes gumming at their mothers’ teats, and yoseph, whose carpentry-rough hands cradled hers when he said, I will ask your father, I will.

the sky is vast and blue over nazareth, and it is almost enough to fill her arms.

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II. one day she comes back from the well, and there is an angel sitting at the table of her father. It has many eyes that blink languidly at her, and a circlet of fire at its temples; at her coming, it rises to its feet (a brightness that goes up, and up, having to crane its neck to fit beneath the thatched ceiling) and says, hail maryam, full of grace, the Lord is with you.

(its voice is like summer thunder, iron on iron)

be not afraid, the angel says more gently, for maryam’s breathing has gone ragged, her heart stuttering in her chest. you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name yeshua.

how? she demands, though her voice breaks on the word and she feels light-headed. yoseph, she thinks. oh yoseph. I am not yet married.

er, the angel answers, and none of its eyes will meet hers. you might want to sit down for this bit.

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III. the angel—gavri’el, it says, you may call me gavri’el—the angel gavri’el takes her walking in the hills, that evening and the day after. gavri’el is patient, if clumsy, speaking equally in bitter truths and riddles so lofty even the sanhedrin in jerusalem could not unravel them. maryam is exhausted with the effort of it, trying to understand parthenogenesis and hypostatic union without falling to pieces, or tears.

this child will fill your arms, maryam, gavri’el says finally, the angel’s smooth, marble face turned up to the sun. She watches the eyes on its shoulders flutter shut, and when gavri’el speaks, its voice is reverent. he will fill all the world. of his kingdom there will be no ending.

and I?

he will bring you nothing but bitterness. Through him you will know all the world’s grief, and after, its unanswered prayers for succor. If he will fill the world, then all its emptiness will cry to you.

let it be according to your word, maryam says after a long moment, and watches gavri’el smile.

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IV. (the Lord has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud, she will say to her cousin elizabeth, one hand resting on the faint swell of her stomach. There is a fierce light in her eyes and elizabeth is reminded of the story of deborah, that judge who stood on the rocks of mount tabor and prophesied that the armies would be delivered unto her.

elizabeth does not know her cousin, in that moment, but she makes her welcome, and pretends not to notice when maryam addresses thin air, when she goes walking in the hills rife with bandits and returns unmolested. when she speaks in tongues that sound unearthly, and sets the dogs baying.

blessed is the fruit of you womb, elizabeth had said, knowing it as she knew herself, the words tripping from her tongue before she had the power to stop them—blessed, she had said, but maybe such a blessing as that comes with teeth.)

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V. oh, gavri’el says, when maryam emerges from her bridal chamber the next morning with her hair in wild disarray, and the marks of joseph’s mouth at her thoat, her breasts. She can feel them still, burning as secret coals beneath her sadin.

I am already with the Lord’s child, I did not see the harm in it, she tells the angel, plucking a honeyed date from the bowl on the table. She runs a hand over the swollen curve of her belly as she chews, spits out the pit—her mother says that she will likely feel the child kick soon, the first sign of life from yeshua, son of god, son of joseph, son of maryam, nephew to the angel who sits in joseph and maryam’s kitchen, carving greek letters into their table.

(has any child come into the world with such over-abundance of kin? maryam wonders at it, sometimes.)

no, it is not that, gavri’el says. only, I had a bet with the archangel raphael as to whether you were truly ever-virgin. Clearly, I have lost.

that was a foolish thing to lose money for, maryam tells gavri’el fondly, and kisses it on its smooth granite forehead. what wife would deny such a husband as I have?

one who would not have cost me a week’s worth of raphael leading choir rehearsal! gavri’el calls after her, as she returns to the bridal chamber, to where joseph waits, with rough hands and a gentle mouth. she is laughing.

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VI. the sky over the road to bethlehem is bigger, somehow, than the one over nazareth. At night, gavri’el points out the constellations for her—kesil and kimah, mezarim, the bright star chiun brighter than it has been in many long ages. In the day, she makes conversation with whatever travellers she and joseph encounter, blushing under his fond gaze, the pride he takes in introducing her as my wife.

the sky is wide and she feels full enough to match it, shuffling down the road to bethlehem on swollen ankles, waiting to birth a messiah.

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VII. maryam’s waters break on the hay, and she gives a cry that startles the donkeys into braying. I am not ready, she says desperately. I am not—no, I do not want this, I—why did I think I could do this, I am not, I cannot—tell the Lord he has chosen wrongly, tell him—

but gavri’el is there, and gavri’el helps her to kneel, touching her with hands that are cool and gentle. breathe, the angel murmurs. Its breath is warm, and smells of the roses that grow in nazareth, behind the synagogue. (joseph is saying something about running to get the healer, the midwife, but maryam cannot hear him, he is far away, she is—)

just breathe, gavri’el says, and maryam does. be not afraid, maryam, the angel says, and she is not.

she breathes.

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VIII. yeshua is smaller in her arms than she had thought he would be, with a soft skull that fits in the palm of her hand and eyes dark and piercing as maryam’s own. There is still birthing fluid slicked over his baby-soft skin, and blood from where the midwife cut through he cord that bound maryam to her son.

the child will be called holy, gavri’el says, as though he is no longer certain of it, peering down at yeshua with a look of some consternation. he will be called holy.

yes, maryam answers, but he will be called yeshua first

yeshua is small and his face red, screwed up as though sucking on a lime rind, but when maryam looks at him, the whole of the sky is inside her, and she is full, she is so full.