I Am But Dust

An Ash Wednesday poem

Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash

I am but dust
my daughter tells me
replacing my full epidermis in days
you’ve never touched me if
you haven’t touched me this month

I am but dust
with a daughter born cooing
covered in scales that filled
my fingernails
when I searched for her scalp

I am but dust
and long before my mother’s mother
a star broke apart scattering glitter
across the floor like seeds
and some of them caught

I am but dust
and rubble and rummaged hope
lifted from a battlefront
where light falls on blackened doorways
in the morning

I am but dust
a generator of life
manufacturing death
who sheds poems and promises
and still curses the heavens

so
shape on my forehead a cross
a sign that I
have always been here burning
what isn’t mine