The light from the crematorium travels across the grassy courtyard into my cell, illuminating one wall with a pale, soft light. I wander across the cool expanse of tile, and stand facing the light from double glass doors, criss-crossed with steel bars. At night you must always keep them padlocked.

A man in a silver fire suit has opened the furnace doors. He has in his hands a great metal rod. He stirs and prods the bones of any remaining life-force. A woman stands off, halfway in darkness, and halfway in the glowing light of the departed. She holds in her hands a silver bucket. When he opens the doors, the light leaps from its surface. The chanting monks from the day before fills my head. The funeral flowers were made of black paper.

In the morning, I stroll easily across the courtyard. The grass is still wet. People don't come here, except when death calls. I approach and stop to admire the dripping golden lotus, and three-headed nagas, undulating up the sweeping, white-washed stairway. A stairway that says, “you're going somewhere.” A red and gold chimney tapers off elegantly into the sky. Like the stairway, it communicates a metaphysical passage.

I enter into the small dark basement. Dead flowers and dirty stumps of yellow candles are scattered about. I realize I'm walking in ash. There are coins on the floor, resting in perfect nests of it. The last to fall from under tongues and over eyelids. Some of them are curiously bent. I am not superstitious. I put one in my pocket and then enter back into the inhabited world, where the sunshine insists on honesty. I walk around the temple lake, with the chanting from the day before and the golden light replaying in my head.

When I come back around, I return into the darkness of its belly. A portal to somewhere. I pull the bent coin from my pocket and place it exactly where it had fallen.