Ashes

Calla lives behind the crematorium,
the home where they make ash out of us when we are done being human.
Before we make love, she asks me to fabricate an obituary for whoever they are burning.
I refuse, but she won’t let me unzip her pants until I come up with something.
So…“Okay, his name was Ryan…”
I use the name of her ex-boyfriend,
she shutters and laughs.
I can only get a few lines in before her tongue is thrashing
around inside my mouth like a shark...and
My eyes cascade along her ribs, drip down her belly
Her teeth shine bright, glinting like broken bottles.

And it continues like this for months…
always having to laugh about dark things before we can touch.
She becomes a psychological surgeon, suturing together sex and death, and I the nervous patient, standing outside her apartment in the cold, pacing in the circles of my thoughts.
the sex becomes lead boots that i wear and the corners of my mouth get heavier.
And When She flies off to Brooklyn to pursue
money and more men, my heart beat slows down,
and I know that I can stop loving her.

After my father was done being human,
He visited the crematorium,
He spent eight years in a plastic bag, in an urn, sitting on a book shelf in my step father’s house, around books he never would have read.
Finally, my two brothers and I drove down to Tahoe—
my father riding in the trunk the whole way.
Justin, in the parking garage,
busted off the Cross from the urn
He said, “That should have been done a long time ago.”
and threw it against the wall.

The boat is quiet
as the three of us lean over its edge to release our father like a fish we can’t keep.
We watch his ashes sink to the bottom.
My aunt warned us that sometimes the ashes float,
And sometimes you’ll see chunks of bone,
and it’s not as beautiful
As you see in the movies,
But it is.

The three of us jump into the lake,
We tread water as he dives towards the floor.
Parts of him moving into the bellies of trout.
Most of him dissolving into the acres of water.
Andrew says, “son of a bitch was ready.”
And he was, for sure.


Today, Calla is married and I no longer have to love her,
Which still fills me with a great joy.
And my father is swimming along the rocks
trying to trick the fly fishermen,
biting and letting go,
tugging on the hopes of a casted line

I walk by the crematorium and these thoughts rise like air bubbles—popping
when they hit the surface.
And the sun seems reluctant
to go behind the hills,
as If it wants to shine on me
a little longer than it should.