The Other Side
When you finally arrive she will not be happy to see you.
She’ll stay seated on the shade mottled bank of a heavenly
stream. She’ll continue
splashing stones into the stream with her back turned
hard to you while you cry out,
“Mom! Mom!” She no longer wants you.
The connection lost in afterlife. And she might still be hurt
by all the sleepless nights you gave her. Alone in her bedroom
reading library books and trying
not to imagine the worst. You’d gladly let her slap the shit out of you
if it meant she had to hold your gaze and reckon with the sadness.
“I stayed there,” your eyes would accuse,
“You’re the one who abandoned me!” Black clouds will roll in and
darken the hill-scape of Heaven. Her laser-red eyes will crease
your face. She’ll shout how you’re the one who took her pain
pills and never returned. Derisively she’ll question you,
“Where were you, when I was suffering and dying? Out wandering
the darkness, using your drugs and drinking instead of
huddled by my bed, tending to the small fire dwindling in me, almost dead.
Standing outside pressing your head against my death-room door
while I suffered on the
other side. Too small and scared to come inside and comfort me,
to say goodbye.” Her pointing finger will impale me. “It was your choice
that I die without you, not mine.”
She’ll make an awful commotion. Androgynous winged beings
will come to calm her and to consider you coldly while their
magnificent white wings beat you to the opposite bank.
They know sixteen-years-old is no excuse. She will retake her
seat by the stream. She’ll consider the ripples her small stones create.
She’ll smile and begin unremembering the boy who once abandoned her.
And you’ll watch her. Forever from the other side.
It’s Gone Too Far to Amputate
The world’s gone dark, but the other children
continue to play hide-and-seek, happy with the
explanation we’ve been given; that we will find our
dead later in heaven. Blind, yet we seek each other.
Sorrow hidden inside a triumphant grin.
Out from her organs the agony bleeding
those last days. Pain pills made a haze,
pushed agony off into the distance.
Still, the hurting never ending. Always niggling.
Until the night the Reaper freed her.
At first I could play with the other children.
I ignored the darkness, though I sometimes stubbed
a toe searching for my hidden sister. No fair! Your turn to count!
I wished for the promised light. I wished to recall my
hidden Mother’s fingers glance gentle along my skin.
Now the darkness hides inside me. Not playing. Not seeking.
I should have plucked my heart from my chest when I had
the chance. I can see the grief’s gone gangrenous. A red-black
line snakes up from my navel, gropes toward my heart. Still, I want
to feel her withering body at the top of the stairs when she said,
I’m happy you came home.
I Never Liked the Tilt-A-Whirl
Will we pop into heaven
beatific and gleaming?
Showered and shaven,
primped and plucked.
Standing ramrod straight.
The men’s neckties impeccably
knotted, juxtaposed with the
women’s flawless hourglass figures.
Looking like nothing
so much as a 1950’s ad
for the latest advances
in modern living.
Or must we hurtle in,
gibbering and wailing
like a child plucked
from a hurricane? A child
witness to a furious wind
spinning her mother off
into the violent sky.
A child bruised and battered.
Shredded clothing, shivering
blood, drenched in shock.
The juxtaposition with
sudden celestial stillness
will soon have us
heaving and puking blue
cotton candy goo like
a ten-year-old after
exiting The Madman’s
carnival ride. Our mind
swirled like our leavings
in the carnival dust.
Then, feeling a little better,
we must huddle
in a heavenly corner
hugging our knees,
hyperventilating,
like Jesus repeating:
Why?
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