Once I swore that if it ever
stopped raining long enough,
I would run away and find the Garden of Eden,
where I would talk to God
and ask him why he made me.
It was no secret she wasn’t
thrilled to have me.
I wasn’t ever really invited,
but I suppose I was never uninvited.
I was tolerated, given things,
allowed to have friends over.
I always had a birthday cake,
food to eat, and clothes to wear.
But it was little things,
things that weren’t expected,
presents just to say
“I’m glad you’re mine”,
weekend trips to museums,
and having her read to me at night,
that were missing.

Too late now.

It’s sort of interesting, though,
being where I am.
I guess I’m halfway
between Home and Eden.
I’m not alone here.
We don’t talk, there’s nothing to say.
Names, reasons,
they are irrelevant.
We all want to talk to God,
but we’re not in heaven yet.
So we sit between two worlds,
like we’re between the glass
of a double-glazed window,
in a thin strip of space
that was forgotten in the Creation.

Where I am, there aren’t days,
just a colorless expanse
of time and space and energy
with nothing to fill it except
whatever thoughts we can generate.
I fill it with thoughts of her,
and memories.
I found some memories
I thought I’d lost,
ones from when I was very little,
ones I could never quite get right,
and ones I never needed.
Now I remember sitting in church,
two or three vague seconds
of sliding on an unknown playground,
bumping my head on the counter,
the chest of somebody’s big black dog.

It’s not bad where I am,
but it’s not really good.
It’s not boring or tedious or lonely;
I’m not alone,
but it’s very empty.
Sometimes I see her,
I’m not a ghost, but I see her,
and I wish there had been more
than indifference.
She misses me now,
but like you would miss a dog,
or a neighbor.
I wasn’t really mad at her,
just unconcerned, vacant.
I was born into emptiness,
lived only in apathy.
And now I was trapped in it,
and the memories aren’t enough
to get me to Eden.