when you die, you lose your hands. your arms. your heaving chest. you float through something very softly, quietly. nothing rushes like you think it does. there is no wild white light. no aggressive dark tunnel. everything breathes. it feels like an embrace of all the lovers you ever lost, the nights they all individually held you for the first time. it feels like that relaxing of tense shoulders that you didn’t even realize were tense, a heartbeat you can’t touch. when you die, everybody who ever cared about you is a light. like the light that shines through your eyelids when you are in a car with your eyes closed on a sunny day. flicker, touch, dance. there is a long line of them and you can’t see the end of it. so you stand as they each go by and there is never night, there is never slow cold coming. they tell you how much you mean to them. every single one of them. this melts any human thing that is left on you. you are all smile. all quivering. all god and no god at all. when you die, you melt into another, like a puddle of poem. like an exhale. they call this soulmates. made of the same flicker of light. the same dance. you both talk about the times that you almost found each other. the path you decided not to walk through at your favorite park when you were seventeen. the car accident you missed by only a blink of an eye, a quick turn of the wheel, when you were twenty-five. you both laugh. together as a puddle, you laugh, and you think of how next time you’re going to plan it better. they say, “i’m going to walk by you at this time on this day, please remember. please remember this time.” and you say that you will, but you both know you can’t take anything with you. it all stays right here. and you melt even more, knowing that sometime you both will have to find another form to live in for a while. you’ll both have to solidify and learn all over again. you kiss goodbye after a few decades of this puddle. you kiss goodbye with that warmth, and they say, “remember,” and you say, “i will,” and you laugh and wake up crying with new little hands, with eyes that don’t want to open yet. and the more you try to hold onto “i will” the more it slips from those new little hands. but the time will come that you see them. and you remember.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
gummygunk
kianamaiart
amandla
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
