The Last Time, I Had To See You

You sat them on an icy oak table– the package of my father’s ashes– like an old-fashioned box cake. Your dusty, branch-colored fingers gripped a pile of pearly white paper sheets with the profiles of people you were to keep until their relatives were ready to let God keep them or send them to the next place they should be. Then I swore I could see my father’s ashes throbbing through the box. I thought he preferred to be with drunks than with me. I never got one call from him on a holiday. I never got to know the strength of his heart’s soul in a close embrace. Why should I care about his ashes? I remember the room space, an opened box in the evening in a basement. I remember I sat, stiff as new chopsticks. My heart was cake, sunken in the center. My eyes were acorns in a puddle. Suddenly you said, “You can come back for them another time if you like,” and then drew on one of the sheets the cost for holding remains of a poor black man you do not know.