Box of ashes

The woman who handed us his ashes in a pink cardboard box inside a pink tote bag said she'd seen me and Lilith in the morning, walking. "Small dog who struts, yeah? So cute."


The woman who handed us his ashes in a pink box lingered to chat. Across from us a woman in sunglasses sat on a long bench, her mouth set. An employee said to her as he strutted by, "they just need to design the head-stone." He wiped sweat from the back of his bald and sun-burned head, disappeared into an office door, and then walked by the other way.


A stone gargoyle stands in front of the air-conditioning units near the benches we sit on.


I tell the woman who handed us the ashes that my mother is still in my closet. Our late cat is still in a tin near the television. My neighbor says her dog's ashes nearly fell off their resting place when her neighbors banged on the wall (her living dogs bark). She would have killed them if they knocked her Ginger's ashes on the floor.


The space of this meditation is flat.