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Rachael Philipps: After you left us

September 16, 2022 by PBQ Leave a Comment

After you left us, I got the call
Her cremains are ready, she said.
The what? I said

The cremains…cremated remains.
She explained, testily. Like… duh.
Oh, I say Her ashes.

What I wanted to say –
She, should
never be called cremains.

Of course I angry-Googled it –
industry term, euphemism,
first found in a newspaper obituary in 1947.

Discovered that her body,
once incinerated, was swept from
the furnace with a metal broom

and looked nothing like ashes (or cremains)
but like sand and bleached sticks.
A desiccated high-tide at the beach.

I found myself admiring our stubborn
big bones which apparently
always refuse to yield to 1800 degrees.

Yet even they must
submit to process,
get pulverized

in a Cremulator
to a uniform grind
to fit the urn.

to make the gone,
and their place inside us,
take up the least space possible.

Filed Under: Issue 103, Poetry, Poetry 103 Tagged With: Rachael Philipps

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