Ashes
When I scattered your ashes
along the banks of the Mississippi
I thought of the time you
and your high school friend swam
across from East River Road
to West River Road, tripping
on acid, your bodies young
and strong, invincible
the way we all were, the demons
dimmer, further away you said
the water shimmered that night
looked like scattered stars
and you were breast-stroking
through the heavens, all the saints
on your side, how car lights
moving along Franklin Avenue
bridge were psychedelic flowers
blowing in the summer breeze
and I remembered the way
your eyes looked when you
told me of that night
I could see it all
before beauty and silence
plunged so deeply into despair
before I knew how much ashes
a human body would leave behind
how yours were so much heavier
than I could have imagined.
*
Roxanne Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her debut novel, Out Stealing Water, was published by Regal House Publishing, August 30. 2022. Her chapbook, Hours of the Desert, was published by Kelsay Books in the spring of 2024 and her poetry collection, What Surrounds You, is forthcoming in 2026. She has published stories and poems in various journals including Third Wednesday, Quibble Lit, Superstition Review, Espacio Fronterizo, Ocotillo Review, Forge, I70 Review, Soundings Review, The Blue Guitar, Anti-Heroin Chic, Lascaux Review, Lunaris Review, Journal of Microliterature, Flash Fiction Magazine, NewVerseNews, Cloudbank, and International Times.
