how it sifts down like snow
into the grout between tiles
while behind me out the window
a late snow sifts down
like flour on a pale day that
twists into spring
and how it turns my black dress
white and filthy again
and I need to beat myself
to clean it off like a sinning soul
and how it has the power
to break another sifter
(of all the unglamorous things
to buy a sifter must top the list)
and how I must knead the dough
to pound it into a kind of
submission that never succeeds
in subsuming the upcropping memories
of those I owe the recipes to
and then how it kills
my time for me with
its dust like cremated bones
chalky and clumping
on my kitchen counter
that none of the
uncounted gone ones
would recognize but
I definitely remember them
how could I not
I use their pie-plates
as I remember Nana
who showed me how to make
a piecrust and said after you
roll it out and lift it carefully
into the plate like an old body
you press it down
around the rim with your thumb
the mark of the cook
and I could never make a pie
after that without seeing
my grandmother’s thumbprint
around my rim