K Dulai
PETRICHOR
I had no reason to hate the dead. They stayed quiet in their need for me and quiet need was all I could handle. In those days, they’d let you stand in the alley while the bodies were prepared. When they were ready, they came out on a flatbed and drifted into the back of a hearse with not so much as a mutter between the driver and the hands. It was all done swiftly.
But the stench of them bothered me. I’d turn the ignition and let the car’s exhaust float in through my rolled down windows. I preferred breathing in auto fumes between the city and the long country roads. How shamelessly those pieces of death continued to tantrum though, even with the car on and moving. They would do anything not to be forgotten.
Forgotten they were soon enough. Life was—and continues to be—a parent who won’t give in.
The last one I ever saw was the color of ash—like the alley I waited for him in, like the pigeon stools on my windowsill, like the ash of my own cigarettes (those particles of lost time nestled deeply in my lungs).
That last transfer had been inelegant, a botched job, actually. Like that putrid being’s life had been, I imagine. Even in death, this guy came out on the wrong side of things. It was raining and windy and his toe stuck out from beneath the white sheet—we were never supposed to see the contrast of their skin to anything tangible in life, not even a sheet. I could see it, the beginning and end of a new world, the grey of the vanquished and possessed.
So I couldn’t help it. It was the two of us alone between the alley and the pyre. No one clamoring to ride with him, no denizen of love to mourn him. We stopped at the side of the road for a little bit of color. I pulled some green leaves from a bush and ripped a bit of squealing grass from the ground. This one would not be sent off pallid. I covered each of his eyes with a leaf and bore the worst wind when I forced his lips open and covered his teeth with green grass. I had no flowers. There are no flowers for the solitary. But now he would burn up just like the rest of us, with the memory of love scraping his gums.
I had no reason to hate the dead. They stayed quiet in their need for me and quiet need was all I could handle. In those days, they’d let you stand in the alley while the bodies were prepared. When they were ready, they came out on a flatbed and drifted into the back of a hearse with not so much as a mutter between the driver and the hands. It was all done swiftly.
But the stench of them bothered me. I’d turn the ignition and let the car’s exhaust float in through my rolled down windows. I preferred breathing in auto fumes between the city and the long country roads. How shamelessly those pieces of death continued to tantrum though, even with the car on and moving. They would do anything not to be forgotten.
Forgotten they were soon enough. Life was—and continues to be—a parent who won’t give in.
The last one I ever saw was the color of ash—like the alley I waited for him in, like the pigeon stools on my windowsill, like the ash of my own cigarettes (those particles of lost time nestled deeply in my lungs).
That last transfer had been inelegant, a botched job, actually. Like that putrid being’s life had been, I imagine. Even in death, this guy came out on the wrong side of things. It was raining and windy and his toe stuck out from beneath the white sheet—we were never supposed to see the contrast of their skin to anything tangible in life, not even a sheet. I could see it, the beginning and end of a new world, the grey of the vanquished and possessed.
So I couldn’t help it. It was the two of us alone between the alley and the pyre. No one clamoring to ride with him, no denizen of love to mourn him. We stopped at the side of the road for a little bit of color. I pulled some green leaves from a bush and ripped a bit of squealing grass from the ground. This one would not be sent off pallid. I covered each of his eyes with a leaf and bore the worst wind when I forced his lips open and covered his teeth with green grass. I had no flowers. There are no flowers for the solitary. But now he would burn up just like the rest of us, with the memory of love scraping his gums.
K. Dulai is a non-profit development consultant and grant writer based in San Francisco.
About this story, Eastern Iowa Review contributor & Pushcart nominee, Cindy Lamothe, said, "I was especially taken with 'Petrichor' by K Dulai -- gorgeous prose and you can feel the immediacy in the storytelling."