Deep down I don’t like ash

it is too intransigent
its manner conveys
a gray enmity

toward whatsoever lies close to a flame
look
it turned even fire, its own mother,
to ash

nonetheless to ash I will entrust myself

it leaves no muddy footprints
on the body

lightly you are scattered
like powder that has remained
on the face of your biography

to ash I will entrust myself

dirt is too great a burden

you can’t breathe
compressed from above too by those flowerpots
your family brings—
also heavy with all the water they drink in

you are chilled through by humidity
archenemy of your neck

but let’s suppose you do want to feel the pain
even if you don’t write it down
it will be doubly wasted

where would you write it

this blackboard
is not sky
and what remains
is not chalk.

To ashes I will give myself.

You see the world differently
when scattered from above

you breathe birds
inhale the scent of mystery
of Sacrament deeply
like ether in cotton
and like cotton it absorbs you

clouds will carry
your mementos for you
rain, umbrella, medicine, cigarettes

let’s not forget kisses
all these charred remains
in any case
indisputably through the ashes

on your charred remains
again you have lived
and again you have written
the very same things.