deepundergroundpoetry.com
Bones
Sitting crosslegged on the bed, gaze searing the wall, my sister's face jolts into view, looking for clues.
Your ashes had arrived in the post. Blue plastic bag in a cardboard box, like lunch.
We go to the place. A place torn with clumsy, insensitive hands, meant for reflection, overlooking the bush-clad land you'd held so dear. Became creation, tentative saplings and delicate mosses, heady scent of Manuka.
The seat in the bush had become a place of death, your death. The Manuka smelling thick of old blood.
Had you known? Had you known that this place built for your reflection, would be a reflection of you? Released here to feed those saplings you had smashed a space for? Ripped arms to clear it, build it, ripped arms to return to it forever.
I look to my mother's face, its unfeeling mask. A ripped lip, a ripped life, a ripped plastic bag as your ashes fall into our hands, so lightly heavy. Terrible bones that rip and tear, shattered to be scattered. Chunks and pieces of you, white now, blistered clean of flesh, of blood, of hair.
Where is your flame-red beard? Your toothless laughter? Now, running through my hands, your your broken fingers touching mine. Filling me with horror, shocking my bones with yours.
You have been burnt away. I smell the smoke, the flesh. Can hear the crackling as your gums give up last teeth, your fingers give up nails, your chest give up your heart.
Your beard is gone, hair seared from scalp, scalp from skull. The heat explodes your lovely head when your eyes have scorched to nothing ... because there is nothing left to see. Not here.
Your bones cling, a smothering dust that blames and chokes. I gather steel to fight you, fling you to my feet, wildly flap hands to free myself, run, run, run.
When bones and retching have released their grip, my sister ends her search and we enfold each other. Living, loving body, fluidity and warmth, breathing gentle on my guilt, pretending my fear away.
Decades of embraces follow. Yet still the nights when we sit crosslegged, eyes in torn faces. Looking for clues.
Your ashes had arrived in the post. Blue plastic bag in a cardboard box, like lunch.
We go to the place. A place torn with clumsy, insensitive hands, meant for reflection, overlooking the bush-clad land you'd held so dear. Became creation, tentative saplings and delicate mosses, heady scent of Manuka.
The seat in the bush had become a place of death, your death. The Manuka smelling thick of old blood.
Had you known? Had you known that this place built for your reflection, would be a reflection of you? Released here to feed those saplings you had smashed a space for? Ripped arms to clear it, build it, ripped arms to return to it forever.
I look to my mother's face, its unfeeling mask. A ripped lip, a ripped life, a ripped plastic bag as your ashes fall into our hands, so lightly heavy. Terrible bones that rip and tear, shattered to be scattered. Chunks and pieces of you, white now, blistered clean of flesh, of blood, of hair.
Where is your flame-red beard? Your toothless laughter? Now, running through my hands, your your broken fingers touching mine. Filling me with horror, shocking my bones with yours.
You have been burnt away. I smell the smoke, the flesh. Can hear the crackling as your gums give up last teeth, your fingers give up nails, your chest give up your heart.
Your beard is gone, hair seared from scalp, scalp from skull. The heat explodes your lovely head when your eyes have scorched to nothing ... because there is nothing left to see. Not here.
Your bones cling, a smothering dust that blames and chokes. I gather steel to fight you, fling you to my feet, wildly flap hands to free myself, run, run, run.
When bones and retching have released their grip, my sister ends her search and we enfold each other. Living, loving body, fluidity and warmth, breathing gentle on my guilt, pretending my fear away.
Decades of embraces follow. Yet still the nights when we sit crosslegged, eyes in torn faces. Looking for clues.
Published 11th Jul 2012
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12th Jul 2012 2:16pm
I love that second line. You'd expect there to be a grimness about putting someone's ashes and food together in the same image. But there was a strange comfort about it - as if turning the ashes into the homely familiarity of packed lunch makes that gone person seem closer to home; not turned by death into something so remote or unrecognisable.
13th Jul 2012 00:41am
