The urn

Seven minutes remain of this simulation
where I have laid, restless to study this morning  
my hands in the sodden sweetgrass where my skin was moistened
 
by death. It was the bloom that said don’t go back there, to the darkness within the shroud. The light at dawn wants to listen
 
to gunshot flair in the morning breeze. This day, you were framed in rage. Teeth gnashed and full throttle.  
This day, I was the white heat of guilt, hands cramped
 
and muddied by the silt of forever. I was blended—
my emotion raw on my voice box, screaming “Why didn’t I do more.” You were seasoned to the streets, it’s hard to believe you didn’t sense it nearing.  
 
We hadn’t spoken in well over a year. Your father longed for a reuniting but I knew your lifestyle was venom to the other children. I thought of Dolos, the personified spirit of treachery and guile. You were a trickster in life. Knew of the dark side and how to make a dollar. An outcast to the honest working folk.  
 
Tattoos on your face; Save my soul written across your mandible. So offensive were the horns scribbled on your forehead: 31 years old and you just couldn’t own adulthood. I get it. You desired your rancor to be visual. The ink on your body told a turbulent story— no stray flowers in your bouquet. You were jaded. Condemned to this sphere. Paper-thin. On uneven ground  
 
but you seemed to thrive in the concrete gardens. Germinating a need for every want. The lost ones trusted you for their fix. You knew your way around the boulevards just like the ladies you ruled over.  
 
Did you seek the misbegotten? Some sort of wretched accrual of unfamiliar spices to season your dish? Recipes flush with resins that master the eye.  
 
Who will walk the path beside you? Wherefore these saints to chip your incisors?
 
Month after month you are without proper rest; forced to simmer in a cardboard box because we can’t stand the thought of you outside, spread thin upon the soil. In the weather. Without a coat. This is the longest we’ve been together— ever since your mother  
 
stole you away in your youth where she allowed you to raise yourself on the streets. I think you said you moved 46 times. I can’t even imagine the instability you must have felt. You were the marble in the dead end of a labyrinth with disarray at the helm. You just couldn’t seem to find your way. I know in my heart, your life would’ve been different if we raised you.  
 
The last time your father and I tried to help you, you said being in that apartment was worse than prison— and you would know firsthand having spent your adulthood there. You were tired of the fight. Of being all alone. In a storm. With no umbrella  
 
with your thoughts churning. Of addiction. Of pain. Of abandonment from your father in your youth. Divorce is ugly. Sadly it was you that carried the weight of it. And I know it was heavy. You sunk hard into the depths, pulling the weeds down with you. And the weeds are prickly in abandoned gardens, tendrils latched onto your emotions: your wit, your verve.  
 
But you cultivated a life of grandeur there, launching headfirst underground where money and stature were your lifeblood; the driver of your persuasion. You relished in the material— heck, it never let you down. Your esteem was furthest reaching with every purchase; your ego stroked, en masse.  
 
You were so violent. So angry. Never to us— just in your recollections of your life. I hope you understand why we let you go. We couldn’t help you if you weren’t willing to help yourself.  
 
No thanksgiving dinners. No Christmas gatherings in the cruel of December. The courts wouldn’t allow you to be with your own child who now lived in our home. I’m not sure what that did to you but surely it had devolved your self-regard. You built up a shell. Layer upon layer of impenetrable scar— rigid, pitted and unaligned.  
 
But all of this doesn’t matter now. You’ve been cast out to sea in a raft with a hole. Too many sins to rise up, not enough to breach the chasm. You are churning in the tempest. Drifting, drifting in endless night—without even a star to wish yourself out of it.  
 
My cousin came to visit us this summer. She helped us greatly during the course of your transition from death to dust in the halls of her crematorium. She took care of everything; an Angel in our pocket. She told me that she had an urn that spoke to her during your brief time there. I know you chose it for yourself. I didn’t tell your father but I had to have this urn.  
 
October 1, 2024: sixteen months after your death, your urn came in the mail today. Your father picked it up. It was wrapped in brown paper. Unmarked. Unassuming. When I told him to open it, he said he already knew what it was. Told me he had a feeling. Even though we had talked about burying your ashes beneath the apple tree we started from seed, he said he couldn’t bear the thought of not having you near him.  
 
We stood at the island, silenced and determined as your father transferred your ashes to your urn. I felt as though we should have said something but this was your father’s moment— you weren’t my son by blood.  
 
Your urn suits you well. And now I hope you can finally row ashore. The ocean, now leavened. The tempest razed. The stars are finally clear to you. I hope you get that wish that you’ve been holding on to, even though its held in death. Whisper it softly as you settle. I’m sure heaven has room for one more.