when god lets the gates of the earth close about me finally
how much time would i have spent here to know my worth
or would i be old enough to know what defines it
or what doesn’t

will I be touch starved, would i have filled that empty space
inside my heart
with the fiction of an angel’s stomach
or with fruit, would it be overripe?
and would heaven be preserved doves’ wings
hung made to like like it’s flying??

or just a very dark room
like my bedroom at night with the shades down
with violet air?
would I hear the world going on outside
would i hear trucks drive by
and would I hear my house being torn down
long after I died?

would heaven be petrified
like pictures in a book about gardens
and how they should be
when I know that what
the earth has to offer me is more beautiful?
am I a worm? Will I be a moth
in some two-sun solar system far away from here?
Was i alive before I was born?

when the earth comes about me like
the undertow, the ground drops away steep and cold
would I have been a good woman
or a bad man?