Here Is A New Poem Anyway

When I think about heaven,

 

and I do,
I tend to think big.
You see, I’m not a pearly gates, float
on clouds type of girl; I want to make quilts
with my hundreds of grandmas,
drive super fast down mountains,
star in a live Tolkien story, and
sit in God’s lap.
If these things, and more, are possible,
they will surely take place near water
(ocean, river, lake, creek),
and I suspect we’ll be naked or close to it –
certainly barefoot.

There will be too much to occupy us

to worry about
what our bodies look like. 
We’ll probably be fit and healthy,
and, as it is heaven,
either hairless or eternally unshaven.
The only thing to give pause
would be scars; I mean,
if we get to choose what we’ll carry over
on our new bodies in the afterlife,
then curiosity
toward each other’s flaps and ridges
will bring endless revelations. 
I hope I can and will decide to look like myself,
that I’ll keep this crooked cesarean streak.

Tattoos might be negotiable,

supposing they are sufficiently moral,
perhaps even signs of our death: 
the hole of a stab wound now
gallantly displayed, the woman
who was stoned not showing every cut, no,
but choosing forever to wear
the puncture point
of the first stone thrown. 
And the man who threw it – isn’t he
in a heaven as big as ours?
We don’t want him there, but I think
if they did meet,
he would put a finger to this spot
and feel pain.

Any human interaction,

even if brief or forced or incomplete,
can form a connection between two souls;
it is possible such a link
is visible in the spiritual realm,
that it leaves a mark, like a scar.
We may also be able to pick
which, if any,
of these many gleams,
or painful smears and brands,
we will continue to bear  –
those shaken off
will simply be gone.

But the bond of a full relationship

is something different and greater,
and leaves such a fixed imprint
on the two souls
it shall not be erased by choice or by space;
once joined, joined forever.
Let me believe this:
let me believe
that if there has been love between us,
even imperfectly,
and one of us goes to heaven, then
the other must follow.
Separation – impossible.

Which is why, supported by a host

of beautifully battered saints and angels,
I say, “Love, you fools; love!”