Ash Wednesday

When the pastor

would smear my forehead

with ashes & remind me

I was from dust & to dust

would return, in his voice

a note of apology, like

​

a pediatrician delivering

grave prognoses, it felt

so congruous. Of course

we’d been dying all year

eating bananas in the shadow

of the cross, quartered donuts

​

always the wrong shoes

same urn of precisely weak

coffee, my name

the church directory software

could not accommodate

because I was married but not

​

a Mrs., always the mission project

never the missionary & the deacons

kept sending me home

with picked-over donut quarters

which were hard to balance

on the handlebars of my bike

​

but I embodied appreciation, practice

for when in six short weeks

we would wear our personal best

& shout He is Risen

my gut an empty tomb

in an empty room

​

& maybe we'd hear about how

it was the women who first

believed, except it was also

the women who left before

that part of the sermon

to make the coffee & prepare

​

the donuts, halved for this

momentous day. But walking

out into the dark on a cold

Wednesday, bangs matted

to my forehead, that at least

had felt close to truth.