Paradise at last.
Death brought no pain,
No suffering,
As if it did not come.
But I know it came,
Because this place,
This paradise,
Couldn’t have sprung from the earth,
But must have been created
In the infinite domains
Of heaven.
Only the mind of God,
A joyful, loving God,
Could have imagined such a place
As this.
This heaven,
This blissful place
Brings me my every need.
The river,
With its water,
Clearer than any glass
Ever made or imagined by man,
Provides the liquid life
Of dreams.
In my mouth it screams
With such intense passion
I cannot help but to drink my fill.
Upriver, a falling cascade of water
Captures the essence
Of nature’s beauty,
An eternal display of majesty.
A forest blankets the land,
Giving me all the sustenance
I desire,
Ten-thousand fold.
The trees offer no fruit,
But to no dismay,
For the leaves themselves
Seem like the very petals
Of the lotus flower,
Too potent for even
The gods.
The blood-red leaves taste
Of pure ecstasy.
Every bite
Floods my heart,
My mind,
My soul,
And eliminates all else.
If the leaves complete me,
Will the bark and branches
Fulfill me?
I peel off a strip of the layered bark,
A brilliant, blinding white
That is not merely an absence of color
But a shimmering concoction
Of every existent color.
As I place the morsel into my mouth
It explodes with such rapture
As to exceed the splendor of before
A thousand times over.
It leaves me desiring more.
I tear away at the bark,
Strip by strip,
Devouring it with an immense passion,
A passion so enduring
It allows me to think of nothing else,
Nothing but the sweet bark of desire.
Soon, a transparent sap,
The color of liquid gold,
Begins to seep
Through the remaining layers
Of bark.
Upon my tongue’s contact
With the life-blood of the tree
My world falls away
Into a land of bliss.
The crimson leaves now seem
Like vinegar,
Compared to the passionate honey
Of the sap that kisses my lips.
I rip off the remainder of the bark
To find a column of solid sap,
So stunningly golden and—
My God, no!
No!
This can’t be happening!
Please tell me
This is just a dream!
A nightmare!
A curse!
Tell me I will wake up
And all this will disappear
Into the mists
That dreams really are!
Please!
Wake me from this terror!
This horror!
Oh! My dear God!
Directly in front of me
Stands the column of sap,
And inside,
My wife,
My love,
My beloved,
Like an insect trapped in amber,
Locked in time,
Forever frozen,
Her eyes unseeing,
Her face in a perpetual scream of terror.
This cannot be!
No, this cannot be!
I immediately start
To slash at the sides of other trees,
In order to reveal pure sap,
Just to prove my eyes wrong.
I franticly tear at the bark,
Ripping off chunks at a time.
No!
Please, no!
I am not in Heaven,
But Hell,
Because in every tree,
Every curséd tree,
Stands a loved one:
My young son,
His eyes radiating infinite horror,
Never to see the day he becomes a man,
My daughter,
Her angelic face contorted with fear,
My mother,
My father,
Every person ever dear to me,
Every person I ever cherished
Every person I ever loved,
Dead,
With their corpses on display
Like a perverted wax museum,
So I may never forget
My past.
My God!
I have been feeding off
My own kin!
How can something so unforgivable
Taste so divine?
I cannot bear to absorb
This hellish sight
One moment more!
There is but one way,
One path that I must take,
To end this torment
And atone for my shameful life.
I make my way
To the only tree
Without an internal silhouette.
I reach out my hand
And penetrate the liquid amber.
It willingly accepts me,
And the sap burns
With a blinding, searing pain.
But that is the price I pay.
