Blinding lights pepper city streets. Lace decorations adorn windows to the heart. Pleasantries exchanged at the transition. A CT scan, an upholstered couch and a table full of trash.
Another night in a hotel.
Another night of terrible sleep.
The holiday was horrible on the body and all an act of choice.
Camouflaged coif cascading toward the spine. Sunrise. Sunset. Sandstone. Brimstone.
Everyone you know will die and you will be held accountable for your sins. All of those beds left unmade and the dishes in the sink will come back to haunt you. The times, oh the times that you didn’t take the recycling out. The stop signs you rolled through. The subway fare you cheated. You will be held accountable in some make believe land in the clouds. A long-haired man in sandals will come to meet you at a large iron gate. He will rattle off every crime and every sin you’ve committed and you’ll just stand there in the clothes you died in, because that’s how it happens. You’ll stand there in the same clothes you chose on what you didn’t know would be your last day and you’ll wonder why you have all of the same feelings you had when you woke up, but now you’re standing in the clouds in front of a strange man and an even more bizarre suspended gate. You’ll wonder why you’ve never met this man and yet he somehow knows everything about you and it won’t ever make sense until you get beyond the gate to the recreation area where all of your old friends are. When you get to them your life will be complete and you will know it and then you’ll be shuffled off to a giant escalator that’ll take you back down to earth where you’ll be stripped of your clothing and jammed into a wooden box and pushed beneath six feet of dirt and sand. This is how it goes when you die. You die, you ascend to the clouds, you meet a stranger, you see your old friends, you lay in a box.
It’s all fun and games until somebody tells it how it is.
Have another cookie and stop checking the stats. The coffee comes black, as does the heart.
See you in the box.