Dust

For a box containing nothing but dust, ashes are heavier than you'd expect. They held the weight of his lies, secrets, and the mysteries I'd possibly never unfold.

His body sat in the morgue for seven days. I’d passed off funeral responsibilities to his family, but nothing ever came of it. On the eighth day, I made the drive to the town he’d grown up in to collect his ashes. The funeral director embraced me upon entry—not out of condolences but out of pity. I hadn’t told her the story, but she had garnered enough information between our phone calls and her conversations with his family to know that these were not normal circumstances.

I lugged the box of his remnants along with a bag of personal items the hospital had forgotten to release to my car. For a box containing nothing but dust, ashes are heavier than you’d expect. I set them down in my still-packed car and dug through the bag of his possessions. It housed his leather jacket, the one he was wearing in the last selfie he’d sent me—his iconic “cool guy” getup. The sleeves were adhered to the body with his dried blood. Abrasions ran up the left arm. I peeled it back to expose the openings and rummaged through. The photo that I had taped to his bedside had been placed in the pocket, presumably by hospital staff, and written along the bottom were the words “I LOVED DEEPLY.”