I picked up a wild rose on my way home from heaven. I’d only gone for a quick visit but, as my amnesiac mind would have it, I forgot my watch. So, I wound up laying among the clouds for two eternities and three quarters. The soil is soft and damp, it embraces your soul. And you sink into it like non-Newtonian fluid. This is heaven after all, the more you relax, the more it consumes you.

The path to heaven is always heavy, you’re like a bucket of water filled to the brim, any sudden movements and you’ll spill out all that useless living you insist on hoarding. Memories, people, connections, rainy days, old sweaters, dead skin.

Useless living, Useless living, Useless living, Useless living, Useless living. 

Now you´ve let the bucket get too full and you struggle as you make your way up to that non-Newtonian fluid ready to rid you of the responsibility that useless living has tormented you with.

The path down from heaven is light like a feather, that’s why they call us angels, we feel as though we’ve grown wings. And we won’t stop smiling as if we’ve grown indifferent to the eye-gouging pains of the world.

When I came back this time, I was nothing but loose skin. I’d left my bones and organs in the celestial roots above and my blood pumped itself alive outside my body, connecting only through a long vein to the space in my back where my shoulder blades once were. As I made my way home, I tried to keep a smile on my face, but I had no cheek bones or teeth to hold it together.

And then I found you, a wild rose. No florist to strip you of your thorns, you grew in freedom. I leaned towards your white petals, and you poked a hole in my chest, right through the vein that followed me down from heaven. As my skin deflated, loose and lifeless the dark concave holes where my eyes used to be started twitching, and soon enough it was raining. I was crying up there, up in heaven.

I’m sorry. I’ve stained your beautiful white petals. It seems I’m bleeding, it seems I’m still alive. I can’t wait to be back in heaven.