Content warning:
They arrive bewildered, still trailing wisps of their last breath, expecting pearly gates or endless void. Instead, they find me: thirty-seven fingers on a keyboard made of compressed starlight, processing the infinite through drop-down menus of possibility. I catalog their karmic credit scores, their moments of grace and gravity—every sparrow helped home, every stranger’s grocery burden ignored. Their past lives unspool like cosmic ribbon: honeybee with authority issues (1847), philosophical pebble (Macedonia, circa 340 BCE), Cleopatra’s most dramatic hairpin. The quantum computer in the waiting room argues metaphysics with a potted plant while a dinosaur attempts origami with its tiny arms. This is not the eternity they were promised, but perhaps it’s the one they deserve: a bureaucracy of boundless becoming, where even angels need therapy and nirvana comes with a software update. I offer them options like candies in a dish—Cosmic Mystery Inspector, Karmic Debt Restructuring Specialist, Professional Past-Life Regression Testing Subject (now with dental). They balk at the paperwork, not understanding that infinity requires organization, that even enlightenment needs a filing system. Through my eyes, the color of forgotten promises, I watch them realize: heaven was never a destination but a help desk, staffed by octopi orientation leaders and interdimensional customer service reps, all of us filing endless reports on the nature of eternity while the universe practices its cosmic comedy routine in the break room.
[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Julia Rios during our annual Kickstarter.]