Walk Towards the Light

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.