Ashes


 I held your ashes in the desert.

Not in a church.
Not beneath stained glass.
But under a white sun
that had spent millions of years
teaching stone how to disappear.

The box was lighter than memory.

I kept turning it over in my hands,
trying to understand
how thunder becomes dust.

You were never dust to me.

You arrived like monsoon clouds
rolling over a thirsty basin.
I craved you the way creosote craves rain—
patiently,
desperately,
with roots reaching into places
even I could not see.

Your laugh shook loose entire seasons.

And your touch—

God.

Your touch felt like galaxies colliding
behind my ribs.

Like stars dying
and being born at the exact same moment.

The universe was never silent
when you placed your hand on my skin.

Even now,
holding what remains,
I swear I can hear it.

Not your voice.

The echo.

The afterglow.

The sound of light
still traveling through darkness
long after its source is gone.

The desert understood.

Wind moved through the ocotillo.

A raven crossed the sky.

The mountains stood motionless,
as if they knew grief
isn't something to conquer,
only something to carry.

I opened my hand.

A little ash settled into my palm.

A little became air.

A little joined the sand,
where countless bones,
countless loves,
countless forgotten names
have already returned.

And suddenly
I wasn't holding your death.

I was holding your migration.

The final journey
of a body that could no longer contain
all that wild weather.

The clouds that were you.

The lightning.

The rain.

The impossible exploding stars.

The sun slipped lower.

The desert turned gold.

And for one impossible second,
with ash on my fingertips
and eternity spread before me,

I felt your hand again—

not touching mine,

but becoming everything around it.

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