The Fast

Hunger makes me an old woman.
It is so much work
standing, sitting.

This prayer book is too heavy.
I don’t look up from it. The joints
palsy, they are becoming spirit.

My sins belong to the plural, to the all.

We have acted brazenly, deceitfully.

We have shrugged off conscience,
tormented our own hearts.

The weight of we —

I didn’t have to hold anything heavier.

Tonight,
I will eat; the sun can’t last much longer,
as if today is an invisible house

that only exists on a street
one day of the year.
Its windows cleaned and raised —

scarlet curtains turn white as litmus;
The sun rolls out of sight.