Sheol For the raw throats of souls in Hell, I swallow waterfalls from the faucet till I’m satisfied. Daddy tells bedtime stories to warn me of the silver fire writhing around the unfaithful, about what’s awaiting me in death, how the Rich Man, his mouth dry as dust, once begged Abraham for a drip water on the tip of his finger— for I’m in agony here in this fire. But Father Abraham denied the thirsty man that small relief while holding his own children to his chest in death’s cool twilight across the canyon from the unholy. And the great Father of nations called out to the Rich man: My child, he said, your life was good, so you will suffer dead. Sheol was eternity’s waiting room, says Daddy, opening the Bible to the book of Luke. There, everyone who died before Christ waited for the Resurrection— their souls separated from their corpses which froze motionless in their graves. And when that day came, Daddy explained: Christ arose from the dead. Then Abraham’s chosen children left the sweet breeze of Sheol’s righteous sea taking seats at Heaven’s golden table. But across the chasm, the lost wailed in cages among other hated souls, Until Sheol turned into Hell— changing itself into waves of flames. Then the unchosen souls awoke in their bodies. They opened their eyes, exhausted, but couldn’t lie on the burning ground. And their skin bubbled up their eyes vaporized. They felt everything. And there was weeping and gnashing of teeth, Daddy says. Weeping and gnashing teeth, I repeat, grinding my baby teeth. For the Rich Man’s charred tongue, I drink, pink nightgowned under the bathroom’s moon-soaked curtains. I drink in the middle of the night, parched from these dreams of Hell. I drink in the middle of the night, because the punished cannot drink at all, and their Hell is not a dream. I can still gulp the water stream from the faucet to my palm to my lips, gulp life from the plumbing Though I wonder under my eyelids, back in bed, with the teddy bear I always hold whether I too could be quick to slip, whisked down to the pit of blistered souls.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 19:03:07 +0000
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