The Wooden Box
My childhood dog’s final home
I
I stare
at the wooden box
that cradles my dog’s ashes.
I pick it up
to feel the carvings
on its smooth surface —
an anchor of memory,
a silent truth —
the date he died,
a small paw print
pressed in clay
and placed on top.
It rests in my embrace,
this wooden box,
his final home.
Its weight is unfamiliar.
Wet trails
trace down my face.
I hold it
like a coin
before tossing it
into some imagined wishing well,
crystalline water
gleaming with impossible hopes,
things I know
I cannot ask for.
An end to my sorrow
would be the end of you,
so I keep my lips shut
and my wish in my pocket.
II
I remember
the sound of carefree laughter,
childlike,
twinkling
like windchimes,
the music of remembrance
drifting through the air.
I realize:
love shapes itself around absence.
And it cannot be touched
or held
by time.
III
I return
to the wooden box
where his remains lie.
I stare
and in my mind’s eye,
it’s cardboard again:
dotted with bite marks,
covered in wiry hairs
he shed in every corner of my life.
