When you say you want your ashes scattered

on the ocean when you die, I don’t 

like imagining your gawky bag 

of bones incinerated, sprinkled like fish 

flakes over an aquarium.

“They have Eco Urns now,” you correct 

me. “A buoy you pour me into. Then

when the bottom of the buoy dissolves,

there I go.” You flutter your fingers.

When I die, I say, just put me in the trash.

Or leave me in the apartment with the cats,

but dress the cats up in little outfits,

a Santa Claus and elves with jingle bells

on their little cat hats, so when 

they get hungry they’ll devour me

adorably. Only I have no cats.

The party is over. The keg’s kicked

and the few stragglers drape over sofas,

scraping pipes with twisted out paper clips.

Someone’s put on Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Someone’s asleep in the room where I left my coat.

“Stay,” you say, but I’m tired and unmoved 

by what looks like a wave swelling inside of you.

So I keep on walking away, through

the quiet neighborhood, the rest of winter, 

the next year, a new job, new apartment,

bad roommates, and worse, and loves!, each

the one to save me if I’d let them, until one day

the chance to tell you I should’ve stayed

that night, that I’ll make it up to you,

is gone forever, just, as they say, like that.

After you died, you weren’t cremated 

like you wanted, but buried in a family plot

in New Hampshire. I saw it on Facebook,

the social media we both most hated. 

I almost left the story of when you snuck

mescaline onto an airplane in the comments.

I want just once to do right by you

before I’m already looking backward at it,

at you, at the two of us

passing a Camel back and forth on the steps

after everybody else has gone home.