Had it been a forever thing
There would be no doubts about its efficacy
However the doctor told me I couldn’t survive on love alone
And so I fasted for 14 days
And passed away quietly on the last
On the day I woke to the dull realization
I could see a faint light
As though I was seeing it through someone else’s eyes
For a moment I missed my old body
But it had always felt like an empty vessel
All those years I had lived inside but never embodied
And so I let it waft away like a scent
And stayed there preferred to be his spine
To walk his feet in each direction
I learned that love is not synonymous with my body
That those blasted molecules could not embrace me
But only crush me at their gravitational center
With my own vessel I could not straddle each intersection
And no matter how good my intentions I was limited in my physicality
I would never stretch to fit my container
Little did I know I was primed for this moment
To just be a lingering thought in the mind of God
And then of the person I would rather be
So the prescription I was given
For my tendency to absolve myself as love
Was the physical pain of being
The absurdity of soul entombed in flesh
Forever I would walk my own feet in no direction at all
Surely this nature must be Hell!
I said stupidly on the doctor’s table
She knows all kinds of things about the physical nature of being,
So she must know how much it aches
“Shirley, you are in Hell,” she jokes, she takes my hand
“You feeble worthless dirt.”
She pricks her own thumb, then mine, and presses them together
And she grins, “Now, do you feel mine?”
