Vox Populi
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Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Arroyo Burro Beach
Arroyo Burro Beach. The tide dies a while then starts its way up again — & up again. Fog rolls in, dense & sudden. Behind me there’s a rock halfway to the end of the bay, hunched, split in two, black & blue with mussels — that’s where I turn around & walk back each day. A restlessness swells inside the tides there — & it’s there each time, just before I can look away — everything drowns into itself again & into gray. I no longer pick up shells — I let them be: wave rake them back & place them at my feet again anyway: small skeletons, empty of life, but pretty. Look at me, writing circles around what I must face: The man I love is dead. The ashes he asked I lose to this ocean are still in our room, in a red box he gave me, for some birthday in New York. His dust. I’ll keep it a while longer — keep it as one secretly keeps something for one’s self & won’t, today at least, lose more of him to these waves.
‘Arroyo Burro Beach’ from These Many Rooms (c) 2019 by Laure-Anne Bosselaar. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
Vox Populi 
I too have kept the ashes. Can’t part with them just yet.
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So sorry for your loss, Stephen…
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I can see this so clearly as I think about my husband’s ashes scattered in so many places he loved, including the sea where my son surfs. Thank you.
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Oh, Barbara…. my heart goes out to you…
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Lovely and so very moving. The rock…hunched and split in two.
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I have returned ashes of my brother and my mother to the ocean. Still a mixture of pain, grief and healing. Healing is slow and doesn’t come with forget.
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