A Jar of Dirt
- Jul 31
- 3 min read
by Mitchell Ny
You really aren’t made of flesh and guts and bones; all ground to dust. No. You are of twigs and autumn leaves, Bossa Nova, hopes, apparitions. And I hold you so close to my chest as we climb. Because your cradle is fragile and my skin is dewy and slick with sweat. We stop only to answer the curiosities of passersby.
One furrows his brow and bludgeons my soft flesh with what? Compassion. “My condolences,” he says. I bruise so you don’t. I tell him, “It’s fine. They aren’t real ashes. It’s symbolic.” But you are more real to me than any old jar of dirt.
More condolences brush past us like the thorny chaparral shrubs that redline my shins. To them I respond: “It’s symbolic. It’s symbolic.”
A small woman stops me to embrace me, and I hold you tighter than ever. She lets go, finds grief on my face, and her eyes well. I know she cannot be feeling empathy because I do not feel sadness. I want to. But now, I feel discomfort. She smells of onions and I can feel the salt on her skin brushing against mine. Against my will, our sweat conflates. We both notice how quickly her expression shifts when I tell her, “It’s symbolic.”
Hikers tend to be too friendly and too curious. I’m sure we are an odd pair to spot: a sweaty man in jeans and a handmade jar of dirt climbing Old Grayback. Still, I envisioned a quieter ascent. I was told to train for this climb but this was far too urgent. Too urgent for the right shoes even. Too many afternoons, I woke up fetal on my apartment’s vinyl flooring, with only enough in me to crawl to the pipe and to smoke myself back to passivity: the Quiet.
You were of the Quiet—a breathing stain. Between the bones of my ribcage, I fed you until you were far too much to carry. You became too large for me to lift myself from the vinyl to eat, to drink, to piss. Look at you now, a jar of dirt. Yet I clutch you so close while you temper the quivers in my legs.
The air thins as we ascend to your grave, and my legs begin to give. I am sick of pines and firs and dirt; now you and I are in it. We conflate. We lie on the switchback, you atop my chest, and become immovable—like my nerves had been pulled gently from my navel. I am denervated meat and cooked clay.
I remember I was once innervated by you.
The sun crawls on the horizon, incandescing the sky like a threat. At the summit, I will dig a hole for you. I will dig it with my own hands and let the dirt pack beneath my fingernails, so you can linger the way death does. In time, you will be forgotten the way dreams are. With the dirt of your grave in my fingertips, announcing your death with every hello-goodbye, I will see and know that you have gone.
We inch toward the summit together as the sounds of night creatures drown the crunching of my Crocs on the pebbles. Only minutes of daylight are left, and I want to spend them with just you. But there is a figure on the horizon—a towering shadow, haloed by the orange skyline. Beside him, the shape of an urn, not unlike yours. We approach them.
He’s my best- or oldest- or childhood friend, I don’t know. He looks over his shoulder to acknowledge me silently, then gazes back into the horizon. I set you by his urn, then I sit beside him, joining in his reverence.
“What’s in yours?” he asks.
“It’s hard to explain. It’s symbolic.”
I sense a smirk.
“Mine too,” he says.
We left you with his jar, unburied in the pitch of the night. The sun painted, then died—so we may only appreciate its beauty in hindsight as we face the dangers of a lightless—but not lonesome—descent.
Mitchell Ny is a Cambodian-Taiwanese writer based in Southern California. His work appears in Maudlin House, Same Faces Collective, Bending Genres, and Blood+Honey. He was a finalist for ALR’s 2026 Nonfiction Contest and shortlisted for Fractured Lit's 2026 Micro Prize. He writes to wring from the mess: the scrappy, the ugly, and the brazenly beautiful.
