Eyelids splitting,
spreading my ribbon of vision:
A figure speckles the expanse,
but his features don’t pluck the strings of my memory.
Splendor stuccoes this society,
shaming memories of my last life to only an echo.
My cheeks pitch with a proclamation,
“Only the good come here.”
Caught between saint and spirit, the stranger smirks, “Something like that.”

The sole light of my pardoned soul,
the apple of my forgiven eye,
and the snap of my serpented tongue ask,
“What’s the catch?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”

Wishes granted with no choice. Dreams caught with no net.
They evoke the lullaby of faulting, striving, beating, succeeding, a cycle this place
this place
is forgetting.
“It’s too good.”
“I know.”

Goodness only grows in the dark earth of suffering.
“I don’t like heaven anymore.”
His cackle burns, his halo horns, “Heaven?”