ashes

spontaneously, i decide to go to church for ash wednesday service. i don’t really know why but i feel compelled in ways i can’t really explain.
it’s been years since i’ve been to church except for funerals. maybe that is the reason i go – to feel something in that place again, something other than loss.

i’m feeling nostalgic so i go to service at the church my parents got married in, just down the street from my childhood home. i kissed a girl for the first time in the backyard of the church where there used to be a swing set (it’s a parking lot now).

one of the last times i went to church was to a mass service and i was extremely high, sweating vodka and chemical drugs. i thought it was a statement at the time, i guess. maybe it still is.

once, i went to this catholic church because they had a visiting finger bone from a saint – this relic in a huge ornate gold box. i wanted to see it and i saw it and i thought it was cool. it looked a bit like a bone from a chicken wing, except this one was holy, apparently. what the fuck does that even mean anymore?

church is funny to me in some ways because even after all the years have gone by, it’s the same as it ever was even down to the people. the priest will greet you. the church busy body will size you up, especially if she doesn’t recognize you and ask you what church you go to and if you’re married, because she probably knows someone’s son who’s looking. there’s always someone’s son looking.

i get my ashes and get reminded that i am dust and to dust i shall return. when i was young, this felt very cosmic to me, like something you might see on r/im12andthisisdeep, but truthfully it still feels profound. i am dust. we all are. stardust, carbon, ashes, nothing.

my religious experiences have been in moments where i can see myself outside myself for how small and insignificant i truly am in the grand scheme of creation. dust in the wind. ashes to ashes. roll on snare drum. what am i? rorschach? god, do you ever just find yourself annoying? i think that’s all i am sometimes. who gives a fuck what i think anyways?

i go thrifting with the ashes on my forehead and feel high. i buy a malachite ring someone made in a high school shop class. it’s imperfect but i like it. i buy gifts for some elders i know. i feel foreign on the drive home, unreal, in a way. i do not know if i like the feeling, and even now, i still cannot tell you.

i feel complicated.
is god real? is there someone up there bigger than the self and do they know what i know and see my pain? i can’t decide what is more raw. knowing or not knowing. was there ever someone there? i can’t decide what is more painful – heavens silence or heavens nonexistence.

is my father in heaven? or the happy hunting ground? back in for another round of samsara?

my father is in a heavy wooden box i picked out at the funeral home with floral couches.
Ashes.

when i die, who will pick out my box and what will it look like?