“Mommy, where do we go when we die?”

And there it was, the question Emeline has been dreading to answer aside from the birds and the bees.

How does an atheist answer this question? Does she tell her child there is nothing after death, that we all just turn to dust six feet under and that’s that? Emeline takes a deep pause. She clears her throat repeatedly and mumbles “um” as she scrambles for an answer.

She eyes the door, maybe she could make a run for it. She pushes the thought from her mind, puts on her best fake smile and begins.

“Well honey, you see-” she says as she brushes the hair from the little one’s face, “we don’t really go anywhere.”

The little boy’s face scrunches at the response.

“You mean we just stay here?”

Emeline realizes she’s been vague, but maybe vague was the answer to her problems. Maybe she could “vague” her way out of this question.

“Yeah, kind of.”

The little boy’s eyes light up as he sits up straight in his bed.

“Does that mean daddy is still here?”

Emeline’s breath ceases momentarily. Suddenly the purpose for the question makes more sense. Her husband had died two years prior in an accident. He was in critical condition at the hospital before he passed. It was the first and last time Emeline prayed.

Emeline’s tone becomes more stern.

“No sweetie. Daddy’s not here anymore, you know that.”

Oddly, the light in the boy’s eyes grows brighter.

“But I’ve seen him, and you just said we stay here when we die. So, I know I’m not seeing things.”

A rumbling begins in Emeline’s stomach. She takes a deep breath, tightly clenches her teeth and says, “Sweetie, you know that’s impossible. Daddy is gone, and he’s never coming back.”

The boy is deflated. Emeline realizes she may have come off a bit too harsh.

“Honey-”

“No,” he screams, “you’re lying. Daddy is still here. I’ve seen him!”

“Honey, I need you to calm down. Don’t you speak to me like that-”

“You’re lying, you’re lying,” he says over and over again.

“Sweetie-” Emeline tries to hold him, but he pushes her off.

“He’s still here,” he shouts.

Emeline sighs defeatedly. “Fine!” she screams, “Fine, fine I believe you, just please settle down.”

The little boy stops, breathing heavily. “You do?”

“Yes” Emeline says, “yes, I believe you.” Emeline realizes she has to let him keep his imagination. He’s far too young for her truth, and if “seeing” his dad gives him comfort and let’s him cope, then what kind of mother is she to take that away?

“Good because daddy said you had to believe so I could tell you.”

Emeline’s face is befuddled, but she plays along.

“Tell me what?”

The little boy yawns. “He told me to tell you to open the top drawer of the corner cabinet in his study. He said you’ll find a box in there with a note attached. He said he’d been meaning to give it to you, but never got the chance.”

Emeline’s once blush cheeks fade into a shade of white paler than a ghost. Her throat clogs as she is at a loss for words.

“I-” she begins to say, but the little boy is fast asleep.

Emeline regains her composure. Confused, she turns off the lights in the bedroom, closes the door behind her and takes a moment outside of her son’s room. “He’s confused,” she says, “it’s just his imagination.”

Emeline attempts to brush off the bizarre conversation with her son as she walks away only to pass the study. She pauses and stands in front of the door. She hasn’t entered since her husband’s death. Emeline’s pulse is racing, her palms sweating profusely, she takes a deep breath and reaches for the handle. Her hand rests on the handle for a beat as she musters up the courage to open the door. “This is ridiculous,” she finally says, “it’s all in his head and this will prove it.” With one turn she enters.

The study is dusty but everything is as her husband left it. Emeline storms towards the cabinet in the corner and opens the top drawer as instructed. Other than a few envelopes there was nothing. Emeline is somewhat dejected, but reassured that it is all in her son’s head.

As she is about to close the drawer, she notices the board in the drawer is lopsided. Emeline removes the envelopes from the drawer and pushes further on the lopsided end. The board pops open and reveals a false bottom with a single box within it.

Emeline gulps at the reveal. Suddenly the room is spinning and the walls are closing in.

“Breathe,” she tells herself, “he must have seen David putting the box in the drawer. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Emeline deeply sighs and slowly reaches for the box and sees a note attached.

“To my dear Emeline, I am a man of my word. I’m only sorry it took so long and wish I could give you even more. I love you forever. David.”

Emeline brushes her fingers across the ink on the paper as though for a brief moment she has her husband back.

A single tear strolls down Emeline’s face as she opens the box. Emeline begins sobbing uncontrollably as she stares at an emerald cut diamond ring, the ring David had promised Emeline when he first proposed with a ten dollar silver band. She takes the ring from the box and places it atop the rusty silver band on her ring finger. She laughs nervously, not knowing what to believe.

“Mommy?” she hears her son’s voice behind her, “are you crying?”

She quickly wipes her tears and turns to face her son. “No baby, mommy’s okay,” she says.

He sees the box in her hand. “You found it!” he shouts excitedly, “see, I told you.”

Emeline smiles. “You were right. Come on let’s go back to bed.”

Emeline takes her son’s hand as they head back to the bedroom, and she tucks him in.

“Mommy, does heaven exist?” he asks.

Emeline looks down on her son’s pure face. “You know what sweetie, I don’t know, but I know you exist, and if there is a heaven, you’re it for me.”

The little boy smiles, temporarily satisfied by his mother’s answer.

Whether heaven exists, or there’s life after death, or if Emeline’s husband really did show himself to their son doesn’t matter to Emeline because in this moment she has everything she needs right on earth.

She kisses her son’s forehead and closes the door behind her. She looks at the rings on her finger and smiles as she makes her way to her bedroom.

Some things are better left unknown.

Sometimes, I hate God.

Not for any particularly contentious reason do I hate him. He hasn’t been preached to me since I left the womb, nor has he ever made me feel like he doesn’t love me. The only way he’s slighted me is by creating this big, unfair universe.

He filled it to the brim with things we can never touch. What must it feel like to touch a star? How would it feel to fly on a planet with impossibly strong winds? Our fragile human bodies, for as exceptional as we think we are, could never handle such mysteries and live to tell the tale.

If you fell into a black hole, the entire universe would collapse inward until the billions of stars and galaxies would just appear as a dot in your vision. In the blink of an eye, you’d see thousands, millions, even billions of years pass before you. It’s quite possibly the most poetic way I could imagine dying, yet tragically, I can never experience it.

The universe is becoming lonelier, too. It’s expanding in every different direction, fast, and day by day we see fewer and fewer stars. At some point, all around us will be blackness. No sun. No galaxy. We’ll never be able to look outside our small slice of the observable universe, never know just how big or small we are in comparison to everything.

We’ll never know what the hell everything even means.

It hurts more than it should. God’s tempted us with the promises of unfathomable galaxies, planets, and life forms, but they all rest beyond our reach. Maybe when I die, I’ll be able to live as a ghost, and I’d spend my enternity exploring all the realms we could never see.

I just hope it’s something fantastical, something well worth the wait.

My mind is a tidal wave of thoughts, roaring over the heavy roads until at last the engine dies. They trigger me like a gun without the bullet, observing my reaction, its damage insignificant to those around me. I am not wounded by sight, yet I feel crimson stains beneath my skin.

I am sad, I think. And yet I smile.

I am happy, I know. Yet saltwater slides over my cheeks.

Will the mind’s perplexities ever be understood as they intertwine and dig deeper into the pit of my subconscious? Thoughts hold blind control over me. I am merely the fallen apple in Newton’s theory, reacting to the forces around me. The cause of my actions reaches to my conscious, begs me to understand my own reactions.

Yet I falter in the maze of my mind. Forever I am a mystery to myself.

The cemetary's been there since I was a kid.

I've never been to it. It's only up the hill, just a short walk through a rather beautiful patch of woods, but something about it has always scared me off. When I was a child, it was the idea of all those dead people, only six feet below the ground, waiting for nothing, watching with empty gazes. I didn't know what I would find there, and that scared me.

When I was seven, my father was killed in a car accident only three miles up the road from where I lived. The funeral was rather pitiful. Thirty years of love and life, ended by an unexcited old man reciting Bible verses that fulfilled nobody inside, though we pretended to be relieved of part of a pain.

Then my father was buried in the graveyard up the hill, and the fear of it only worsened. Sometimes I awoke from nightmare dreams where I met him in the graveyard. Sometimes he would hug me. Othertimes he would scream and yell until I cried myself awake.

Eventually, I determined that it was time to go to the graveyard. I'm not sure how I made this decision. It had probably stewed in my subconscious, cooked in nightmares and pain until it finally broke through the thin veil protecting my consciousness.

One morning, on a Saturday, while the world was drowsy and unmoving, I dressed in warmer gear and, as quietly as I could, crept out of the house.

I don't remember much after that. Just tree fronds and terrible fear. I was so lost in my own thoughts that even when I reached the old cemetary, I was twenty or thirty feet into the grounds before I even realized I had arrived.

Immediately, my heart was in my throat. I was finally here, after avoiding it since I had been born. It was too late to turn back; the demons I had stirred up had already seen me.

I walked slowly through the graveyard, glancing left and right, and it took me a moment to realize I was looking for ghosts.

I found his grave relatively quickly. How I found it, I'm not sure, but it was almost as if I had been drawn to it, with little choice, like a light beckoning to my very soul.

The name was easy to read. Andrew Zavil. The gravestone said only that, and his birth and death date. There were no other words on the stone. As though the people who had buried him had simplified his entire life to a name and a date range.

The next thing I knew, I was crying, hugging his gravestone, and even as I realized it I felt no need to stop, to quell the tears pouring down my face. I hadn't cried, not in the weeks since his death, but simply stayed empty, tried not to risk allowing emotions to grow simply to die.

I remembered his face. How he laughed when I made small messes at dinner rather than getting angry.

Soon, the storm inside was gone. The sun was rising overhead, and the light made the fall leaves surrounding me seem to glow.

I remembered being so afraid of the graveyard. I was afraid of ghosts, or the dead. But the only thing to be afraid of, I realized walking home, was memories.

It was cold, but she didn’t feel it. It wasn’t until she noticed the open window and the dead leaves did she remember that it was late fall. Where had the time gone?

The last time that she had noticed the passage of time had been a while ago—right before the figures started appearing.

She reached up into a cabinet and grabbed a tea kettle. Filling it up with water, she looked out her kitchen window over her sink and out to the front lawn.

She lived alone, in a rather isolated spot in the countryside, right near the water. While it really was a beautiful piece of land, not many people would want to live there—the graveyard was rather close by. That tended to put a sort of gloom on things. In front of her rustic, two story house was a wide expanse of dark green grass, with a small, dirt road leading to town about ten miles away. To her left, she could see the waves crashing on the sharp rocks. Far out in front of her, about a mile, was a deep forest. She tried to make the most of her isolation, however, and had planted a garden right outside, underneath her window. She planted daisies in the summer. Looking down at her small patch of dirt and daisies, she noticed that they looked brown and dry. She thought it must be time to change to pansies, for the fall.

Suddenly, a flash of grey caught her eye. When she looked up, she saw nothing. She stayed that way for a few moments. Only the feeling of cold water rushing over her hand as it overflowed from the kettle brought her back to focus. Placing the kettle on the stove, she glanced once more out the window. Nothing. For a second, she had thought it might be one of the figures. Taking a deep breath, she walked to the next room and grabbed a book and a blanket before

sinking into her heavy armchair. Turning page after page, she lulled herself into a sense of calm.

Then the front door opened.

A long creaking sound ensued, as she had never been one for home maintenance. She froze, all her muscles stiffening, and slowly places the book on the table. Without making a sound, she took off her blanket and stood up, walking towards the corner of the room. The figures were here. She could feel beads of cold sweat dripping down her back, and had to press her fingernails down into her palm to keep from screaming. She knew that if she stood still an did not make a sound, they would leave her alone.

There was a group of them—they were whispering, she couldn’t hear. Their footsteps made the floorboards creak. They were coming closer, closer—and then they stopped.

She turned around the corner, only letting her eyes sweep the next room. There they were. They were standing in a small group—three of them, maybe—and they were just looking around. She didn’t know why they came to her house. She had no idea why they chose to bother her. All she knew was that she was going crazy.

They began to speak again, and this time, she could hear them.

“They say she still wanders around the shore outside, looking for her kid.”

Who were they talking about?

“I heard she didn’t kill herself at all, but she was pushed!”

Were they talking to each other?

“I read that anyone who has stayed here for more than an hour has gone mad.”

They began to yell.

“Emily!”

She started. That was her name.

“Emily! We just want to talk to you! Come out!”

She was panicking. How did they know her name? The figures had never interacted with her before.

The kettle began to whistle.

“The kitchen! Hurry!”

Emily heard the footsteps as they rushed to the kitchen. For a second, she stayed where she was, silent and still with shock. After a moment, she walked across the floor and out the front door, still open wide. The ground was cold beneath her bare feet.

She walked, as if in a trance, out towards the shore and the waves and the rocks, and standing there, with the water spraying on her face and the rocks cutting the bottoms of her feet, she began to remember.

Her son.

Jason.

Her son had loved to play outside.

He loved to throw rocks into the water.

She remembered she came out to look for him.

He used to love to play hide and seek, but there was nowhere to hide in such a large expanse of land.

She walked around the house, a dark feeling settling inside of her.

He had always wanted to swim, but Emily had said no. It was too dangerous.

Emily had walked to the shore, to the exact same spot that she found herself now, and saw her son swimming. But he wasn’t moving his arms.

She had jumped in after him. She never came back out.

Now, standing at the edge of the sea, with the memories of the end of her life flooding back to her, Emily once more stepped into the churning waters and succumbed to the darkness.

It was cold, but she didn’t feel it. It wasn’t until she noticed the open window and the dead leaves did she remember that it was late fall. Where had the time gone?

We met in a haze.  The kind that lingers like smoke: filling first your lungs and then moving slowly through your veins until your body is halfway oxidized with the substance. It was cut, pure. I traveled you like I would any high. I stopped only long enough to gaze out the passenger side: watch time tick by, gauged by hay bales sloping on the side of a deserted landscape.

One night, lying, my feet freezing and huddled under the warmth of the covers you had thrown off your naked body, I turned to you. We were aplomb with the fuse of marijuana, discussing all of the intricacies of the world, our bodies forefront. I thought I could read you, tattoo to toes and you could translate my body into the same sentence structure, for surely we were simpatico. I asked, “What do you think about the third law of thermodynamics?” You shook your head as if to wonder why I became scientifically inclined when smoking.

“I think it’s great.”

I dissolved into giggles.

You turned to me and smiled.

I kissed you.

Letting you own my body was never the issue, it was learning when to take it back. I could lie, languidly under your torso or stretch myself into the safety of your arms. It was heat from fire, flame, a forewarning of the burn out, that kept me so assuredly resting with your body as fully intertwined with mine as biology would allow.

What do you think about the first law of thermodynamics? I whisper, but you are sleeping. I think it portends to great lusts: energy, neither created nor destroyed, must go somewhere.

When the heat left in my body, crawling from my pores to find you in the dark, became greater than the work you put into me, it was a sign you had traveled.

It took me years to aquire you.

It took strength, courage, and perserverance

But I did it!

I refused to give up!

I didn't take no for an answer.

I wore you down, or so we joke.

But now....

I have you!

The most important and most treasured person in my life.

We said I do,

we bought a home,

we started a family.

My life began the moment you said yes.

Our life was everything I hoped it would be and more.

But how could I possibly know that one little mistake could make it all go away?

Could I really lose you?

You are my everything.

You can't forgive me?

We can't move past this?

We HAVE to!

I can't live without you.

I made a mistake, I'm sorry...

I'm sorry I broke you, but can't I fix you?

I can't lose us!

I can't lose you!

I won't lose you, I will fix this...

But can you ever really fix something that was broken?

It will never be the same, there will always be a part that is broken.

Loss of any kind hurts,

but losing THE one is devastating.

A poem to myself

Has it been too long

since you worked with your hands

in your very own garden?

Since you lifted those tools

and felt muscles harden?

You have been strong

in your writing and reading

but how are you now

at your hoeing and weeding?

Then take up the rake

and those gloves and your spade

And take up the time

before daylight fades.

And may your bones stay

agile and supple,

and may the soil ever

be eager and fertile.