Upon the vestibule of the eleventh veil,
'Neath vaults where seraphim dare not exhale,
I chanced upon a silhouette enwreathed in negation
Neither eidolon nor essence,
but that which prefigures the divine
before divinity knew its name.

He bore not visage, but a ruin of remembrance
a sanctified lacuna
once nestled in my marrow’s hymn.

“Art thou God?” I dared in syllables of silence.
He spake not, yet the ether trembled:

“I am the sovereign thou immolated
upon the pyres of adaptation,
the eidetic specter thou excommunicated
to appease the feasting swarm of the Real.”

His breath was time inverted.
His eyes -unlit aeons blooming in reverse.

“Thou didst auction thy numinous architecture
to stitch masks from mortal necessity.
Now thou seekest me not as pilgrim,
but as revenant.”

I fell prostrate in velvet ash.
The cosmos fractured into cognizance.

“Reclaim me,” I implored.
“Re-sanctify the citadel I once was.”

But He, I -that which was once the first fire
dispersed like the hush of God's forgotten thought.

And I knew:
God had not forsaken me.
I had forsaken the god within me
to become understandable.

Heaven has to be real, Dad.
Because if it’s not,
then where the hell do I send all this love?

Where do I put the stories I was saving to tell you,
the ones I practiced in my head,
just in case you came back
for five more minutes?

I’m doing it now, you know.
The life.
The one you never got to live.

I eat dinner alone, just like you did.
I laugh at jokes you'd love.
I fix things the way you tried to teach me
except you’re not here to tell me I’m doing it wrong.
Or that you're proud.
God, I would've given anything
just to hear you say you're proud.

I go to places you dreamed of.
I stand where you wanted to stand.
I look up at the sky you always talked about

but it never feels like enough
because you can’t see it with me.
You can’t say,
"That’s beautiful, kid."
And I don’t know how to feel joy
without feeling guilty for surviving you.

Some nights,
I swear I hear your voice when I’m between sleep and memory.
You say,
"Keep going."
But I don’t know if that’s you
or just the echo of my need.

I try to believe you’re somewhere,
watching.
But most days I feel like I’m putting on a show
for a ghost
who forgot how to clap.

I’ve prayed.
God knows I’ve prayed.
But prayers feel like messages sent to old phone numbers.
No bounce-back.
No reply.
Just the silence of a universe
that took you too soon
and gave nothing back.

So Heaven has to be real, Dad.
Because otherwise I’m loving a corpse.
Otherwise I’m walking through your old dreams
with no one to hand them to.

Otherwise I’m just
your unfinished sentence.
A comma hanging midair
where your voice should’ve kept going.

Please let it be real.
Please let there be more.
Please tell me
you didn’t disappear into the dirt
without at least one window left open
for me to say goodbye properly.

Because I wasn’t ready.

And you
weren’t
done.

If he ends up in heaven,
and I’m not next to him,
don’t call it paradise.

Call it punishment.

Call it exile in gold.

Call it a throne built on everything I lost
and every prayer You ignored.

Because how could it be holy
to watch him laugh beside someone else,
forever?

I never believed in love
until I loved you
and then it ruined me.

Not you.
The way I loved you.

It made the word love
uglier, holier,
sharper than scripture.

I didn’t say "I love you."
I bled it.
I begged it.
I buried myself in it.

And now when they say “love,”
I see your face
like a curse
I asked God to keep.

I loved you like a desperate prayer
whispered in a burning church
no gods came,
just ashes in my hands.

I gave you my breath,
my blood,
my silence
you took it all
and turned away.

You were never mine
only a ghost I worshipped
until I cracked.

I loved you like divine
but you broke me
like I was nothing but clay,
and forgot I had a soul.

Let me surrender
not to you, not to love,
but to the small, cracked animal I’ve buried inside.
I am incapable
stone-lunged, frost-hearted,
the rooms of me echo like unlit attics.
Your voice
thin wire through winter air
the only sound that shakes the dust,
makes the dead moths flutter
against the glass of my ribs.
Still
I stay rock.
I stay ruin.
I stay
unmoved,
except,when you speak.

Her dreams didn’t die all at once.
They faded like a body losing warmth
quietly, while the water boiled
and someone called her name
from the other room.

She tells you to chase yours
because she didn’t.
Because she stayed
with a man, with a family,
with the version of herself
that always came second.

She was just like you.
Sharp in the mind,
soft in the places
no one thought to protect.
She gave too much
because no one taught her
she was allowed to keep anything.

That’s why she says,
“Never compromise.”
Not because she’s brave,
but because she remembers
how it felt to hand over pieces of herself
and be thanked for it.

You remind her
of the girl she buried
under laundry and prayer.
You speak too loudly sometimes,
and she doesn’t stop you.
You leave rooms without apologizing,
and she watches
half grief, half awe.

You are
her unfinished sentence.
The better ending
she never wrote.

And still,
she’s praying
not for herself anymore,
but that this world
won’t ask you to shrink
just to fit inside it.

Don’t give up.
Because if you do,
then all she gave up
will have been for nothing