If I’m wrong, and there is a God, I’m going to tell Him about you.
If I finally black out for the last time and open my eyes again to the pearly gates, with Judgement at my feet and the big guy ahead of me, I’m going to wave my right to the questions. I’m not going to ask Him what He was thinking about suffering, or ask Him how I was supposed to know that He existed. I’m not going to ask Him how it all started, or how it’s supposed to end.
Love, I’m going to pull up a chair and tell Him about you.
Because none of that other stuff matters. The stuff about Catholics and Protestants. The Dead Sea Scrolls. The Golden Rule vs the 10 Commandments. Capitalism, Communism, and what he would do when both football teams both sides asked Him for help. It’s all nonsense, armchair word games, in comparison.
But I will tell Him about your beauty. About how struck I was by your eyes, your form, and your words. About how you were an artist that I envied and a protagonist that kept me page-turning life. I’ll talk a lot about how I smiled thinking of you, and all the little quirks and asides that we had. I’ll mention that your form physically had a poise and grace that was all at once normal, natural, sublime and intoxicating. I’ll note with distinction that your demeanour always reflected the same.
We’ll talk until the sun goes down, or up, or whatever the sun does in heaven, while I tell Him about how you were the only one I would have crossed oceans for. How my life was altered when I met you. How my being was vindicated by your welcome.
He’ll understand with His perfect smile how I was simultaneously willing to change who I was into the “perfect image” of what a man should be like for you (and you alone!), and yet I understood that that was a blasphemy to you. We’ll sit in big fluffy cloud-armchairs beside a fire recognizing that nothing inspired me to be me more than you. Just by being you. He’ll know what I mean when I say that. And He’ll know that you never said anything like that, but I knew it. When I’m done, He’ll understand that you were my Understanding.
I’ll talk about how you sometimes didn’t believe me, or believed that I believed it but it wasn’t true in fact. But He and I would laugh, because we would both know the Truth. Over angel-cake, we’ll talk about how your life could breathe into mine with the slightest of flickers. How you made “loving” worth doing.
While I can’t put it into words, we’ll be in heaven so I’ll use the language of feeling, and tell him about how we were always independent and yet always connected. How I struggled throughout my life never to come on to strong and too removed from reality, but also never to do a disservice to the importance of your being. Then, using our heaven-language, I’ll convey the secret that I held all my life – that I knew you knew that I never had to worry about coming on too strong or too weak, too surreal or too pragmatic. That I never had to worry at all. We were exactly as we should be. As we would be.
And as my weary head lays to rest, I’ll tell Him the Truth: that you were perfect.
And it won’t matter than He already knows everything, being God and all, because that’s not the point. The point is that if I’m not telling the story of your beauty, then I can’t possibly be in Paradise. Because there is nothing that affects me so profoundly as you. If my soul truly is immortal then it has to be resonating with the sound of you, because you make me feel alive. Like no other.
You’re divine.
- Z
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