It is freezing cold and the boys in their old car
roll into the driveway of our dorm, waiting as we clamber in, bundled
and still half-asleep. it is dark out, and the birds
aren’t singing.
We enter the house full of smoke and fragrant
with shadows, the usually joyous room somehow
dense and unfamiliar and silent, and I wonder
is this what it means to be sanctified?
The bishop, simplified and robed in black himself, breaks
the hush and speaks of dust and ash
and death, that holy-return
to the holy-before, likens my life
to a vapor, a moment, to the tiny flutter
in my chest at the brush
of someone’s hand on mine.
He speaks as if it is inevitable, this entering
into the chaos of the darkness, both secured and surrounded
by the pulsing of a thousand great and wild wings, rippling
with enough muscle to lift me out or
kill me, and quickly, too.
He speaks and all of a sudden
I am Moses at the base of the mountain,
staring up at the thick darkness where God is,
or Isaiah, asking for those angels
to place that glowing ember on my unclean lips.
He speaks and all of a sudden I am Mary, called
Magdalene, gazing at the black shroud
separating me, once again, from the expanse of everything else
I cannot imagine death, but I can walk
toward the bowls of ash, the left-overs
of living things, and I can ask to be bathed
in them, submerged, singed, buried—
is this what it means to be sanctified?
is this what it means to be forgiven?
we drive away into the growing lightness, the sign
of the cross on my forehead,
already smeared and oily,
and still burning.
