Destination

They say it will be Paradise. Time stops, but it also runs. It's beautiful. It's horrible. It’s the worst place you could ever imagine. People are shredded between the teeth of giants and the poor are enslaved by the color green. They are just bones–stuck–screaming from the deepest chasms of the earth. No one can hear them. But the green is beautiful from the clouds. Dirty. White. Hot. Cold. Paradise. Soft women. Rolling hills. Barren deserts and endless ocean blue. Red skies. Rats in gutters and warm bread baskets on tables. Every kind of animal, land and sea. Children's laughter. All of the fish you can eat, blessed by the hand of a man in white. Vomit on walls and hearts on sleeves. Paradise.

A son executes his mother and sister at the kitchen table with a brand new rifle he’s been hiding under his bed for a week. He notices that in the sunlight, the spatters of blood look a lot like thick maple syrup. He is fourteen years old. He sits down at his breakfast and cries.

A glass of milk. A revolution begins. Sweet maple leaves. Men and women dressed in the warmest gold you’ve ever seen. The orchestra begins to tune. Endless screaming. Angels singing.

A priest confides in his eldest niece. He has been taking an antidepressant–Lexapro–for several years now. He can’t live without it. She tells him that she has been taking the same antidepressant since she graduated from high-school. They laugh over cups of stale coffee, while a hail-storm passes outside the parish window.

They say it's a place where bubbling streams will teach you everything if you listen with your ear to the water. Wars are fought amongst men in pressed shirts who share the same face, the same indestructible, grinning mask. Old heroes wander the streets. They pee in dark alleys, alone. Unopened love letters. Freshly-cut flowers. Trimmed dead ends. Crowded pews. Broken toddler bones. Mountains of fried bacon. Infinite images of perfection. Mothers kicked to the curb. Empty condolences. Tennis balls. Cello strings. Chicken shit. Children speaking five languages. Children flushed down toilets. Ten kinds of milk. Eternal youth in plastic bottles. Coins under dusty couch pillows. Holy vows under stone arches. People speaking, people saying nothing. Paradise.

A girl stands on an unlit street corner in the snow waiting for her next client. A man pulls up to her in a crackling red sedan. Dutifully, she bends down to his window. Her knees are naked. He extends his hand, and takes hers in it. He holds her hand, and wishes her a safe night. Snowflakes catch on his sweater sleeve. He rolls up his window and drives away. She never forgets his license plate number.

They say it's a place where everyone makes love in the daylight. Where love is measured meticulously by numbers and symbols. Where women hold drowned children in their arms. Fathers missing. Fathers coming home. Women using clothing hangers. Fulfilled promises. Lovers skinny dipping under meteor showers. First strokes on white canvases. Bodies colliding. Wet, mildew towels. Young blood. Open wounds. Fates deciphered through tea leaves. Fates dependent on daisy chains. Boys and girls crying, holding onto their sweethearts in the dark. Knowing the future. A first kiss feels like it will last forever. Until the next one. Second kisses. Third kisses. Last kisses. Dreams riding on eyelash wings. Vomit on walls. Hearts on sleeves. Endless screaming. Angels singing.

But what if they’re wrong? What if lips don’t exist in Paradise?

What will it be like?

What will it be like?

What will it be like?

What if it’s Paradise?

One push through a blinding white.

I blink.