Ashy beaches are eroded by longtime companions,

tousled by airy grasps of wind,

dissolved by foam-stringed water.

Loss, but so little at a time it’s barely perceptible.

You wouldn’t care to trace the steps 

of an obscure speck of “ash.”

It slides down the sides of an hour’s glass

and into my own,

carrying the taste of waves,

sentimental seasoning

diluted so viciously

lulling us to ignorance.

I fail to see its origins 

and forget where I come from,

forget that it’s a harbinger of my past,

a mirror shard of molten sand.

Ashy beaches are mounds of unmade memories,

regrets formed too late.

We drink them in, speck by speck,

we are fed in little doses.

It’s too bitter all at once.

The ocean’s weight in sadness

makes its crystalline tears undelectable

to our blissfully unaware palates.

I glimpse the truth

in my waterborne reflection.

With your ashen face in mine,

I recollect scattered memories.

Your visage is older, wiser.

Yet, we are bodies

of the same blood,

my grandfather.

Conversations never vocalized,

thoughts seized and blown away.

Embraces never made tangible,

the very notion washed away.

To whom is the right granted?

The authority to delay, to withhold

a sacred mourning—

my grief.

I seek a larger dose

in tantalizing fistfuls of ash.

What’s been withheld caves in,

a sorrowful unveiling.

Perhaps, the authority to withhold my grief

lies within the blood we share

that is wielded so readily

by the trespassers of my mourning.

Ashy beaches are graveyards of affections

never whispered enough.

Speck-by-speck doses

sought to give me solace,

to keep mourning at bay,

to keep hysterics from rampancy.

Ash makes for a poor alleviant.

Leaving grief unbeknownst 

to the afflicted

only delays inevitable sorrows. 

The floodgates are finally opened by ash-covered fingers,

palms saturated by grave intrusion (upon that which is withheld).

Consumption of the truth unrestrained (his passing);

the pains come twofold (i’m sorry for your loss).

Viscous guilt courses through my veins

as my bloodstream agonizes for what is lost.

I remain uncompensated 

for a forced ignorance of the departed (they withheld you).

The death of deferred promises.

Forgive me for expecting more time with you.

Remnants of us remain only in

small doses.

Ashy beaches are born from what we return to 

Ash