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 of 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.
