Reliquaries

The black one contains the incense of his cremation: the fragrance of hair become ash, shreds of flesh lost among the sorting of the parts, grindings of those that didn’t burn. A bowl of gold nuggets reshaped in fire; jewelry for the bereaved. Another, fashioned from prayer and smoke, holds a rosary and a cross. (Was he a believer?). In the plain envelope, the one with the string tie, are photographs and small paintings of his women; some he didn’t know. That one is made of ice. Windings, stained cotton sheets, imprints of last bodies can be found there. The silvered one, the hemisphere, hides a woman’s breasts; the oval box the curve of her body from breast to knee; the one of marble holds knees to ankles. Her feet and head? He sold them to a collector. Take care with that one. It holds his souls, one for each face. (Do souls have weight?) Arrange the boxes for me, will you? Put them in a life’s order. Will you begin with the one, and then the other, and the third becomes the ghost? I come back to the resolved: his is the humility of the commonplace, refuge of the soon forgotten, a natural process.