Today's the day. I've waited seven months, 4 days for our anniversary to come around and yeah, it might be just a little weird to carry him up in Rita's Baby Bjorn™, but her Henry's gotten so big, and she said I could have it. Five pounds isn't heavy unless you're hiking 10 miles. Because I knew it had to be at our waterfall, with our wishing pennies at the bottom of the pools there. Though our wishes didn't do us much good, did they? Doesn't mean they don't still have a kind of life.
They call it a retort, that oven they stuck his body in and pulled out of it this heap of ash. A retort, an answer to one stupid, irretrievable night of bad judgment and wet road. And now here he is, Jason, a box of cremains, a horrible word, if ever there was one. Sounds like some kind of non-dairy creamer. God I hate it when they stick together two words like that: blaxploitation, give me a break, infomercial, dancercise, cute as a cleft palate. It's a crushing act of reduction, that my man of muscle and bone and corny sentimentality and sexy swagger and sheer hard-headedness could be brought down to 5 pounds of ash, and what did that creepy dude say? "Calcified bone material and fragments." What the hell happened to his gold tooth I wanted to know, the one in the center of his crooked, beautiful smile.
That guy, like he was afraid his wax would break, or like he was some kind of ventriloquist, barely moving his lips, said it had been "either consumed by the heat or rendered unrecognizable." Rendered unrecognizable, what kind of bullshit euphemism is that? Burnt to hell, why not just say it? With temperatures of 1500-1800°, it's no wonder. But you were always a pyro, weren't you, Jase? Those high temps would have gotten you, well, stoked. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I'm sure you don't mind a little joking anyway, right? Nothing can hurt you now. You're truly dead, if not gone. Man, will you listen to me talking to a box.
I admit it, I've gotten a little — what would my mother say — tetched — these past months, starting right after the phone call, and getting stranger every day without him. To think I was pissed off to be woken. I picked up the phone practically shouting, "what do you want now?" He'd left on his bike a few hours before, after a half-drunk half-fight about of all things, the lottery. I said there was as good a chance of winning if he played or didn't. He accused me of jinxing him with my facts and doubts. I wasn't trying to knock him, I swear; I just get, got, get, I used to get sick of his endless fantasies. For some people, dreams help them do more in life; for some other people, Jason included, they keep you stuck right where you are.
It was a cop on the phone, though, all business. They'd found Jason's motorcycle in a ditch off 139, outside Hackamore, front wheel still spinning, headlight on. Why do you think he had to tell me that? Like I couldn't picture it all anyway.
I wasn't sure I could find my way up without you, but so far it feels right, even if I have to sit down every once in a while, to stop myself from shaking. Your box is poking into my breasts, but I don't really mind. I guess I could have put your ash in a Ziplock for comfort, but I wasn't sure I could face even opening the box just yet. Truth is, I go back and forth about this all, thinking that what's in the box is just jetsam or driftwood, that is, some inanimate stuff, and thinking it's actually what's left of you, the man I loved more than love itself, more than, oh god, now I'm crying again. Where are you, Jason? Where? Not in this stupid box.
Maybe I should have sprinkled you in my garden and grown something like an apple tree. You did like apples, said I had the same whites and pinks. Besides something growing would have days ahead. You always wanted me to believe more in future. You said carpe diem translated to "the goldfish has died, time to flush it and buy another." I know it's unforgivable, but I'm getting tired. Those are the words of the living, those who still have a body on this earth. Oh Jason, I'm not going to fail you this time, though, I promise you that. This last time I'm going to feel your weight, or what you left behind for me to carry up this breathless hill, all bulky in a baby carrier.
I know we're almost there; I can smell the wet in the air. It's just up, through here, where the brush is thicker, tangled, as if nobody but we ever came up here. The brambles catch at my skirt, and the loose pebbles shift under my feet, and I can feel gravity pulling on my legs. Before I know it, I've stumbled, your box has been thrown from the sling and it's tumbling down the hill, losing its top smacking up against a boulder, and tossing what's left of you to the air in plumes that look nothing like smoke and even less like you. And I'm down on my ass, laughing, laughing, until I'm crying again, because you always were such a contrary, uncontainable, irresistible bastard.
Poet and fiction writer Amanda Yskamp's work has appeared widely in such magazines as Threepenny Review, Hunger Mountain, caketrain, and The Georgia Review. She lives with poet Doug Larsen and their two children on the 10-year flood plain of the Russian River, where she teaches correspondence courses and writes for the local newspaper.