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Short Stories Ashes on Paper It was the morning I caught my best dress and pulled a red silk thread when I heard of your death. My dreams smelled of musty white roses the night before. Your last wife had you cremated, so she could keep you all to herself in her hourglass of sand. But I buried your ashes in the flickering dim DNA staircase I eternally descend, unwinding the sepia film of you.
Of course she killed you- with her cooking and her nagging. It was practical. Insurance policies and investments. Did she find the nude black and white photographs in the consciousness of your darkroom? Or did she find the carefully flung stocking with the serpentine run, snagged by the hasty brush of your thumb? Even the stray cat outlived you. Weeds went wild and the grass never got watered or mowed. Pomegranates fell out of your trees rotted with dried umbilicus flower cords. Then she had the old lady across the street, whom you hated, sell your house right out from under your dead man’s feet. All I can do is throw ashes on paper. |
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