Wrap me in the thin white bark
of the birch and burn me.
I will not smoke,
just smell so sweet.
Hear my sinews snap,
my skin so scalding.

Worry not, the smoke will not
supplant the scent that you forgot.
The sweetness innate but now forgotten,
In that simple way
the simple are so often.

Until they aren’t,
these things innate —
teeming, dark, complex, opaque.
The sweetness bittered, turned to ash,
Weightless for the winter wind to take.