No Drama in Heaven

When I die
I will surely go to heaven
Whether it be at ninety
Or just at twenty-seven

And when I go to heaven
God will open the doors with a smile
He’ll tell me
That he has been waiting awhile.

Heaven will be perfect
A place of holy bliss
Earth will become the place
That I will hardly miss

It will be perfect
Utopia for eternity
It will be holy
A sacred fraternity

I will see all those who have died
Before my time
Who will smile to me
As they drink their tequila with lime

But what happens 
After the first millennia or two?
Won’t I eventually 
Run out of things to do?

Will God create new hobbies?
Will I do something worth more?
Will I care what life is like,
What humanity is for?

How will we know
Perfection without pain?
If eternity is perfect
Then I will surely go insane

Because if there is no difference
There is no emotion
Utopia is hell
As hell is devotion

And when I die,
God don’t forgive me
Because God, I believe
That heaven is not free.


Best,
Anna Belle Lee

Ugly Green Yarn

Silently knitting
Ugly green yarn
She yearns
To step back

To years ago
Where she stood
On her own
A young beauty

Knitting, with the
Ugly green yarn
And thinking
No thinking

She's dropped stitches
And she can't go back
Now she waits
To let it be done

Tight and loose
Winding and winding
Twisting her
Arthritis infested fingers

Ugly green yarn
Reflected in her pearl eyes
Ugly green memories
Of the years gone by

Best,
Anna Belle Lee

Freedom

In a barren field

I plead for freedom

But collapsing

I cry to the sky

Empty dirt

I shovel with these

Clammy pale fingers

And a bitter sigh

Chilly air

Smells of decay

There is my wretched

Desperation high

I sprint through

White grass

Until the light 

Has long gone home

Empty spirits

Breath through

These frozen lips

I roam

"Where would you go
On those chilly nights?"

These lips

Are sewn


Best, 
Anna Belle Lee

My Physical Façade

My soul is a diamond

Hidden in a sheath of bread

I'm no emerald

I'm no ruby

I shine white, not red

My heart is a glass

In the veins, you'll see

I am fragile pieces

I am sharp

Your reflection, I bleed

My brain is a computer

Deleting words, to forget

I am wires

I am memory

Your virus, I regret

My eyes are a factory

Of images to process

I am cones

I am rods

Your image, I suppress

My hands are my handicap

Despite that I'm mad

I reach

I plead for

That which I once had.

Best,
Anna Belle Lee

K-Mart Sea

I'm only a sea in a thousand faces
I wear my heart skinned on my knee
I notice all of these faces
But none of them see me

I'm a big fish in a K-Mart
But in this new place I fall
Fishes only know how to swim
Witness me as I crawl

They came to gawk at me
And happily they'd go
There in my K-Mart Sea
Swimming to and fro

I'll miss you when you leave the sea
But you'll forget me quick
A big fat fish in her goddamn tank
And now I've made you sick

Best,
Anna Belle Lee

My Sister

There are some people that you will have only for a few years of your life. There are other people that, if you’re lucky, you’ll have for most of your life. The thing is, you can’t spend too much time grieving over the people the prior when they leave, because you’ll find others eventually. I have a lifelong friend and everyday I am thankful for her.

            When other people come and go, she is there. She’s always there, even when we haven’t spoken for a couple of days, weeks…even months. I’m going to call her Sandy because I figure if I am going to protect my identity, I might as well protect hers too. For those of you who I know in the real world, you’ll know who she is anyways.

            I met Sandy when I was six-no seven years old. For the first years of our friendship, she was a playmate. But as we became older and grew, Sandy and I grew together. As other friends grew into different people and separated, Sandy and I became stronger. Our roots had intertwined and as we became (slightly) taller, grew wiser and our branches expanded into a vast sky, our roots remained. No matter how far our branches go, our roots hold tightly. It was a matter of luck, we hardly tried to stay as connected as we did.

            As we grew into young adults, we weren’t playmates. We were…sisters. I can recall many long walks as in our early teens during which we discussed matters of life such as religion, morals, sexuality…pretty much anything you wouldn’t talk about with your mom. Heaven forbid our mothers’ know we were both agnostic, or that we were pro-choice, or that we were pro-gay equality.  When you have someone to share those thoughts with, it makes your values much stronger. If I was being ridiculous, Sandy would tell me so, but that was rare and most of the time we came to the same conclusions.

 One of the most significant discussions was when we at her house. I was spending the night and as we sat on her bed we went deep into a discussion about life and death and the problem arouse: what if there was no afterlife?

            “What if…what if there is just nothing? When you die…what if it all just goes black? No memories, no feeling, just…just nothing? What if there is nothing?”

            I believe I asked the question. The thought of nothing after life left me feeling like there was a void in my chest. It left me feeling nothingness, a seemingly impossible emotion. All people, despite what some say, fear being forgotten or forgetting everything. Many people feel that without knowing you will feel and think and remember that there is no reason. What is our purpose if only to die? How can we say “I will love you always” when there is no such thing as forever? True terror is the feeling of nothingness.

            “I’ve thought about that too,” Sandy spoke up after a long silence, “but I don’t think that’s possible. I mean our body consists of energy and if we die that energy can’t just disappear. That’s not physically possible.”

            “That still doesn’t guarantee much,” I sighed, unsatisfied.

            “You’re right, it doesn’t. But we know that we will ALWAYS exist. Maybe we won’t be human, we might not have memories or thought or these feelings, but will exist.”

            (I think of this today and I wonder if it is true. If Descartes was correct in saying “I think, therefore I am,” then this concept does not prove existence.  It does not prove existence in the human sense of the word). This thought was comforting, somehow. I felt glad to think that I would always exist, even if that meant losing my humanity.

            “You’re probably right,” I gave her a halfhearted smile and sighed again. We were silent for several minutes before I spoke again. “You know…whatever happens when we die, promise me something?”

“What?”

“Promise that you’ll wait for me, I mean, if you die first. Wait for me when it happens, when you’re somewhere between humanity and whatever happens afterwards. Wait for me at the pearly gates or at the river Styx, wait for me before you transform into an energy ball. Promise me that you’ll wait for me so that I have someone to go into it all with. I don’t want to be alone.”

Sandy chuckled, “Sure. You’ll do the same thing for me?”

“No,” I said sarcastically, “I’m going to go without you even though you’d wait for me.” We both laughed like the dorks we are and I continued, “Yeah, I will.”

That night I had trouble falling asleep, our discussion still weighed heavy on my mind, but eventually, I slept. I slept knowing that no matter who comes and goes that Sandy would be there in the end of all things. I slept knowing that in the end, I wasn’t alone.

Best,
Anna Belle Lee

Knowing the Unknown

When I was a kid my parents put me in a daycare while they went to work. I met two of my closest friends at that daycare. Thinking back on those days gives me an unusual feeling in the pit of my stomach. Remorseful, for the childhood that I will never have again and yet accepting. The daycare was at a church, though we weren't a religious daycare. It was just where it happened to be. I remember walking around the church, the somewhat sterile air that hung about it's halls. I recall the pictures of religious figures that were painted on the walls and the bibles that lingered over our shoulders each day. We weren't usually allowed at the alters and actual church part of the building, but my friends and I always found a way to sneak there and play on the long benches and stare at the stain glass windows.
However, my most prominent experience in these areas had nothing to do with playing. I recall one particular summer day when a teacher (that is what we called the daycare workers) took us to the alter. My friends sat on the floor cross legged as she took a seat in a plastic chair. She had short dirty blonde hair that clung in curls to her skull. She was an older woman with a mother's figure and a mother's eyes. She looked at us for a moment and told us that a boy from our daycare had passed away.
Now I don't remember much about this boy. I can't remember his name or his face unfortunately. I recall that he was handicapped. I had not played with him much. He seemed happy though, despite his disability.
Some of the kids began to cry, others were silent. The room seemed heavy, even though we were all so young that we hardly knew what death was. All I knew was that death was not good. When I was a few years younger, my great aunt passed away. My mother took me to her funeral. I was only five, so when I saw the adults mourning her death I felt unsure. I held my mother's hand as we approached the open casket. As I looked in the box I saw my great aunt, her hands folded onto her chest and her looking alien. She looked alien to me. It was enough to haunt my memory to this day. I stood there looking into the ghostly visage thinking "that's not her." And as the adults cried, I knew that whatever happened to her was a horrible thing. The word "death" began having meaning to me then.
But even as I sat on the floor looking at the friendly woman I felt unsure. I think we all knew by then that death existed, that people did not like death. However, we didn't know what we were mourning. We  were too young to have asked ourselves what happened to those people, what happened to their spirits when they passed away. As silence weighed down the room, the woman sighed and began to tell us a story.
There was once a river filled with happy river beetles. The water was their home, and the beetles were happy there. Although some of the beetles had ventured to the surface to see what was unknown, they had never returned to the river. The beetles could only assume that the place above the water was not good and the very thought of going there terrified them. One beetle, who I will name Lily, decided she was curious above the surface. She had spent a long time in the water and felt that it was time for her to see what was on the other side. Lily began climbing a cat tail, despite all of the stories she had heard about the surface. As Lily climbed, she became tired. It was a long journey and when Lily had just reached the surface she fell into a deep sleep. When Lily woke up the world looked different. The world was bright and clear and as she looked upon it she felt a great joy. Lily watched as dragonflies flew by her as she rested on the cat tail. She was amazed at their great wings and bright colors.
"Lily!" The dragonflies called out, "Lily, spread your wings!"As Lily heard them she realized she recognized them as friends from the water who had left. Lily looked over her shoulder and saw a set of wings and shuddered them. Lily had reached the unknown. She had become a dragonfly.
As Lily flew around with her friends she said "We should tell the other beetles about this place!"
"We can't..." One spoke up, "We can't go in the water anymore. We would have told you but we can't go back in there anymore, so we just have to wait for the others."
The woman looked at us and said, "That is what has happened to him. He has gone to a better place but he can't come back tell us about it." As we took in the story the room fell silent again. I didn't feel better knowing that the boy had gone to a "better place." I didn't understand what that was. I sat there thinking about what is the better place. Surely the boy hadn't turned into a dragonfly. As a kid, I couldn't grasp the idea of an afterlife. Some of the other's accepted this concept easily and when they did I felt like I was being absurd. Maybe I wasn't smart enough to figure it out yet.
But even as I sit here typing today, I find that the idea of an afterlife like the one the woman mentioned is  absurd, not me. I have spent years listening to people talk about better places and the unknown as if we know what it is, but really, we don't. Even as a child I doubted the concept of this because it contradictory. I simply cannot accept that we know what the unknown is. This whole concept of the afterlife seems to be more of a bad rumor to me.
"I heard there was a heaven from Julie who heard it from her friend Mary."
Something that has been interpreted in a million different ways and all but one of those interpretations is wrong. That day planted the seed of doubt that grew in me as I became older.
Although I do not personally believe in these things, I don't really think it's my responsibility to say that everyone else is wrong. As I said I don't know because I can't know because it is unknown. I wish I had been inspired by that story, I truly do. I wish the story had brought me peace with my thoughts about the boy and death but that is simply not how I work. I wish I could believe in a beetle that reached the other  side but at the end of the day, these stories seem to be what people tell us so that we can sleep at night. In the end we don't know until we reach the unknown.
Not too wishy washy today at least.
Best,
Anna Belle Lee.

Mourning

It was mourning
The sky was dark
The stars were still shining
And a single orange cloud

Your hand in mine
As the sirens blared
In light darkness
And wandering the trail

Our eyes made up shapes
Of monsters creeping
As we walked through dust
Our love was shifting

The moon lit our steps
Smoke was heavy in the air
It smelt of baking flesh
I pretended it wasn't there

It was mourning
As hot hued rabbits teased
You spoke words of passion
And my heart just seized

We approached red light
I was drenched in sweat
We came upon deaths hood
My eyes grew wet

As my breath grew shallow
I felt your hand let go
You wandered to the shadows
To where the fire couldn't roam

The fire ate me
But my chest was freezing cold
The chill of defeat
Rumbled deep in my soul

The city is on fire
Because of you, I am burning
You left me in the heat
With my heart still yearning

Best,
Anna Belle Lee