Instructions For Life After Life

Cast my ashes into an Atlantic gust alongside pelagic birds soaring, sleeping.

Watch them disappear over rogue waves.

Mourn me with salt-stung eyes and encyclopedias of words left unspoken.

Celebrate me with a frenzied fiddle and jittery jig.

Find me in the memory of a parting embrace.

Hear me in sweet words whispered in dark spaces.

Take solace knowing you, too, will one day suffer the pyre.

Picture your ashes strewn to the wind’s caprices.

Believe in an eternal afterlife of repurposed atoms.

Let us rest, not in peace, but spiraling together in an infinite universe pulsating with ancient energies.

From Guest Contributor Elizabeth Murphy