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Containers Sarah Seybold
I keep thinking about the plastic bag.
The plastic bag that held her ashes.
The one I shook out on the snow
in the garden behind her church
where I hoped purple crocuses
would grow in early spring.
The one I tried to empty
under heavy gray sky,
but a film of ash clung to the inside
of that crumpled plastic bag
I put back in the flimsy white box
and left, regretfully, on the grimy lid
of a gas station garbage can, overstuffed,
outside the Indianapolis airport.
I was so flustered and so cold.
My mom died, and I didn’t know what to do
with these containers that carried her.
Sarah Seybold grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana. Her poems and stories are published or forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Indianapolis Review, Great River Review, Arts & Letters, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University Bloomington, and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. She lives with her husband and daughter in Columbus, Ohio.