Evening Prayer -- transformative

transformative
the oil on my forehead
marks me with a life that is not
mine but an existance/essence is that is transcendent in nature

powerful
and personal redolent
with perfume that is both healing
and funerary which recalls both the fragrance of life

and the
stench of death i am
I have become transformed immediately
yet the core remains the same the weight and

warmth
that is laid on me
is/is not a burden and to me
transformative in nature yet transitory is its passage

as perfume
oft is dissipating
on the wind or perhaps the
fickle breath that comes and goes and we

know not
transformative and
maybe it will mark me with a moment
of forever and that will be all that is necessary

for me
to be healed
transformed by that which is other
and yet that which is always with/within/above/beside/beyond

transfixed
i become that aroma
that smacks of radical yet it seeks
to be before dispelled upon that breath is it forgotten

the next
day the spice/incense follows
me marking me for eternity or perhaps
just a transcendent remembrance of what it is to be healed

-- Theresa Coleman