An Initiation to Ash Wednesday

An Initiation to Ash Wednesday

Rachel E. Hicks

I don’t know how to carry another’s
dashed hopes, let alone my own. What
need presses, sending me abruptly on
my first Lenten journey? I rest the vacuum

against the wall, hurry into coat and hat,
minutes late to mass. I forget to genuflect
when taking my seat. This sudden succumbing
feeds on the superfluity of candles,

sacro-heat, glitter of gold, the purple-draped
bruised body above, and a silver urn of ashes—
last year’s Palm Sunday fronds scorched,
ground to ash and hidden away until this moment

in which we bear the weight of one another’s
burned hosannas, dusty prayers—some
answered, some not. I don’t know how
to carry another’s dashed hopes,

let alone my own. After the comfort
of the priest’s thick thumb upon my forehead,
the signature of Jesus—which I will bear
until sundown—weighs nothing.

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Rachel E. Hicks
Poet & Freelance Writer

Rachel’s poetry has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Little Patuxent Review, Relief, St. Katherine Review, Gulf Stream, and other journals.A Pushcart Prize nominee, she won the 2019 Briar Cliff Review Fiction Prize, and her poems have been finalists in several competitions. She is editor of Among Worlds magazine, an associate editor at Del Sol Press, and a freelance copyeditor. In 2018, she served as the Poetry Out Loud regional coordinator for Maryland. A global nomad who has lived in seven countries, she explores themes of displacement, worldview, and connection in her writing. Find her online at rachelehicks.com.

Photography by Dids Sph