Burial Rites

Everyone comes back here to die as I will soon. The place feels right since it’s half dead to begin with. Even on a rare morning of rain, like this morning, with the low sky hoarding its riches except for a few mock tears, the hard ground accepts nothing. Six years ago I buried my mother’s ashes beside a young lilac that’s now taller than I, and stuck the stub of a rosebush into her dirt, where like everything else not human it thrives. The small blossoms never unfurl; whatever they know they keep to themselves until a morning rain or a night wind pares the petals down to nothing. Even the neighbor cat who shits daily on the paths and then hides deep in the jungle of the weeds refuses to purr. Whatever’s here is just here, and nowhere else, so it’s right to end up beside the woman who bore me, to shovel into the dirt whatever’s left and leave only a name for some- one who wants it. Think of it, my name, no longer a portion of me, no longer inflated or bruised, no longer stewing in a rich compost of memory or the simpler one of bone shards, dirt, kitty litter, wood ashes, the roots of the eucalyptus I planted in ’73, a tiny me taking nothing, giving nothing, and free at last.