Ash Wednesday

You arrive in a paper bag inside a shoebox marked
size seven and a half. What’s left of your body

but the measurement of your feet. Your toes
pressed together in red heels or rain

boots, slippers next to the bed. Now your fires
have waned to nothing but the gray flour you’ve left

behind. My fingers unfold the wrinkled neck
of the sack and you escape without protest.

I’ve emptied you for months—cleaned the closets
into garbage sacks meant for the curb, still in the back

of the attic, the trunk of my car. How I want to find
you inside this ash. You slowly disappear,

your terrible act. What remains sticks to the bottom
of the bag, slips out into cardboard, my hands.

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