Debt
I watched you pitch your father’s ashes
off the headland, walnut box airborne,
then shattering on rock —
the plume of him rising
in the thermals like smoke.
Now you’re on the other side
of childhood, where everyone
comes with their stories
already told.
I know you don’t want advice.
What you want is a wrecking ball.
But what good is anger now?
You saw what you saw:
a pale fish breathing through gills,
the pulse in his throat flickering still.
Welcome to your inheritance.
Now you can’t deny you know what love is.
Now that there’s no one to tell.
*
Emily Ransdell is the author of One Finch Singing, winner of the Louis Prize from Concrete Wolf Press. Her poems have appeared in New Letters, Terrain, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She has been a resident at Essere Artists and taught at La Romita School for the Arts in Terni, Italy. Emily lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Powerful.