On Fridays too, the dust stayed inside me.

I’d watch the gray gloom grow like weeds,

and sweep with heavy hands

the ashes left so suddenly behind

death’s violetvoid. Grief gathers around like dust.

 

Sometimes I wake dull, drenched and airless.

I make a white flag from ash,

and slowly rise it to the day,

hearing the echoed embers of the house,

 

and their violent vices

that smolder me into the

night and wrap me in sorrow’s soot.

How can I rise, how can I rise

in obscure and broken mourning light?