There was a voice, honey-thick,
it said, walk toward the light.
It didn’t feel like dying,
it felt like being carried instead
as if gravity had finally
grown bored of me, let me go.
The world was warm glass, amber-lit,
and my feet didn’t hurt for once.
No one warned me about
how strange light feels when
you think you’re alone in it,
how it presses against your ribs
like it knows every layer of you.
Then I blinked, and suddenly,
I was holding cold porcelain,
my face pressed against
something humming with electricity.
The fridge door bent over me
like a worried parent,
a bowl of potato salad waiting
like it had secrets of its own.
My tongue still held
the tang of mustard and skin
human, or alien, or spirit,
somehow all of them the same.
The light was everywhere now,
winking back at me through
the back of the fridge.
The soft hum whispered: You’re still here.