Division

My father’s ashes bloom
as I pour them into a jar
once used for pickles,
the smell of spice and brine
embedded in the lid. He
liked his food “sharp,”
with a kick—black pepper
on oatmeal, hot sauce
on everything else, years
of smoking having blunted
his tastebuds. Now his dust
clings to my hands, settles
like spilled flour on my granite
countertops. How did I end up
in possession of his remains?

His stepdaughter, a woman
I met only twice
in thirty years, the eldest
of Wife Number Two,
(the one my father left
my mother for), wrote
to request a portion
so she and her kids—
who call him “Grandpa”—
could make a special trip
to the lake he loved, scatter
him where he’d taken them
sailing and for ice cream,
full family time every summer
of their youth.

I knew a different man
than the one they remember.
He worked late, arrived home
angry, spoke rarely. Family
vacations were long hot days
in a crammed station wagon,
siblings bickering, our private
miseries disguised by covert
slaps and jabs. Hotel pools
never cool enough, ice the only
thing we got for free.

Yet every time I smell
pipe smoke I reel, spun
by a need to pinpoint
the source of this longing
I was foolish enough
to think I’d outgrown.

Now I tighten the jar lid,
rinse my hands,
sponge the countertop,
the messy dust, the blowback,
the unburied residue of love.

*

Lynn Glicklich Cohen lives in Milwaukee. Her poetry has been published in Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, Cantos, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Front Range Review, Grand Journal, The Midwest Quarterly, The Phoenix, The Red Wheelbarrow, St. Katherine’s Review, Thin Air Magazine, Trampoline, Whistling Shade, and others.