Category: micro monday

I Won’t Lay Dave to Rest If He’s Naked | Kenny Mitchell

My father threatened to haunt me for eternity if I buried his corpse. I don’t know, it was about the chemicals they pump into your skin that weirded him out, or something like that. He was a man with leathery flesh who billowed at the gut, with tattoos disfigured by years of stretching skin. The urn I selected out of some strange sense of obligation seems unfitting for such a man; unless you think a hummingbird skittering above a patch of daylilies perfectly describes Dave. He definitely would not have approved. But hey, he’s dead. And I like hummingbirds. I didn’t put too much thought into the container my dad was going to chill in.

And I don’t see why it matters.

The urn is small in my lap. Surprisingly small. Small enough I’m questioning whether the crematorium gave me all of my dad. He was too broad-shouldered to fit in a fancy terracotta jar, even if he had returned to dust and ashes. They presented him to me in a translucent bag—a funeral suit too skimpy to properly honor the dead. As if Dave were naked. And now, Dave is clothed in a jar depicting the tiniest of birds.

As I amble up my driveway, sun setting, grasshoppers fluttering, I’m not quite sure I want to keep him. I don’t have storage space for an urn. I just moved out of his house, so my dad moving in posthumously is unsettling. I’ve already purchased the urn, and the crematorium did emphasize urns were nonrefundable. There’s no one else to take him. It would make a nice pot for a fern, maybe an aloe plant. I could replace my battered umbrella stand with it. No one needs to know.

It’s peaceful in my driveway. The birds chitter, and the grasshoppers are hissing, probably in response to their feathered predators. Dave’s favorite joke was about taking me on a trip to a nudist beach, so I could finally get some action. I could never understand him; he wore so many layers like it was frigid, and barriers were the only warmth he knew to embrace. He wore so many layers—

I start to pour my dad onto the concrete. Slowly at first, a sprinkle, but you can fit a lot of dust in tiny urns. I turn the jar upside down, disrobing him. I thought he’d flutter away with the breeze, but he just sits there, nude with no showmanship—fitting. I can somehow stomach the sight. A grasshopper lands on the pile of ash, small and mighty. From above, a starling glides to the earth with an open beak, swooping toward the grasshopper. The swoosh of the speckled wings spreads the ashes for me. The grasshopper, alive and well, is a few inches to the right. He escaped.

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Big Lots Indulgences | Anastasia Jill

The neighbors have Jesus glowing in the backyard. First night, I thought I hallucinated him but no. As the day broke into a yawn, a breadth of sunlight on the green revealed a plastic Messiah suspended between a bird bath and a molting lawn chair. He glowed Neptune blue in the midnight dark, but I preferred him blank and dew covered in the mornings. 

I loved their yard, minus the Lord. Wind ruffled the skirts of pink flowers, potted palms bent into the grass, ends pale and frayed from the Florida heat. There was a shed with Christmas lights, where the husband spent hours building bird houses and filling them with thick seed for cardinals and blue jays.

But Jesus. 

I hated that Jesus, especially at night. 

Aunt Mara left the windows without blockage, and her cats cracked the blinds years ago. He watched me at every angle, an insensitive blue solar right demanding I pray, or at least pay him heed. 

“I want curtains,” I told my aunt one morning over breakfast. I hadn’t slept, but spent the entire night at eye level with the windowsill. 

She told me, “We don’t need them.”

Her reasoning was sound — no one was looking in, not physically. There was nothing to fear

I couldn’t tell her JESUS IS WATCHING!!!

She would think I’d gone crazy, yet again.

Aunt Mara didn’t budge on the curtains, and I didn’t eat my breakfast as an act of redress. When she gave me my morning meds, I hid them under my tongue. Haldol, Thorazine, and Rexulti sat like chalky spare teeth beside my aching gums.

I left the house for school, and spat them in the neighbor’s yard. Jesus saw that. I flipped him off just as the husband came out his front door.  

“Morning,” he said to my finger. He couldn’t see well without his glasses. 

All I said in reply was, “Nice Jesus you got there.”

“Got it at Big Lots.” He wiped his frames on the edge of his shirt before placing them on his nose. A cross of nostrils flared at my multicolored hair. He told me, “Jesus saves.” 

“Apparently, he saves Lots.” 

The man didn’t laugh.

I walked away.

And Jesus saw. 

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