Monkeys make horrible spouses. This was something papa said that I never understood. I wanted him to say something else, to add context. Or maybe I misheard, maybe if he said something else, it would give me the clue I needed to decipher the comment, divine its real meaning.

No, he never said anything else. His face would melt into sludge on the table, a snotty grey mess to be wiped up with a rag when the lights came back on. The medium would shake her head and blink in the sudden lights, smile, tell me she felt something present, she really did, ask me what he said.

Always the same thing. About the monkeys.

I went to the graveyard on a cold-mooned night and dug up his bones. The wet grass soaked the bottom of the cardboard box I put them in, and the box broke. Mama used to say to always carry a plastic garbage bag in your pocket in case your box broke, but I was stubborn and thus I spent three hours kneeling in the wet, picking papa’s finger-bones and toes out of the unmown grass.

Lesson learned.