Inipi

Our group of 14 walk toward the canvas mound.
Nearby birch branches burn heat into sacred stones, 
the air suffused with cedar and sage as the elder smudges the opening.
Here now, after 8 years of marriage, I am a single mother. 
I alone. Two young angels- their hearts and the life they carry here echo in me like a steady drumbeat.
This is my first sweat ceremony.

We bow into the dim space still transfused 
with the fading light of the day.
I am sitting at the outskirts of the circle-
the wall of the womb.
The keeper has laid the last stone at the center &
the door to the world closes, cloaking us in black.

Breathe deep.

A sixteen year old woman
whose parents died in a car accident just weeks before,
sits deepest inside.
Her knees at the edge of the pit-
where the hot stone and water alchemy works to cleanse.

The smell of condensation on skin
The cool breath of the world sneaking in at the ground
touching fingertips.
The heat
The darkness
The sound of her soft sobs
Do I even know lost?

The full emptiness.