The Final Journey

I felt numb—

like a carcass,

limp and graceless,

laid on a slab of ice.

A taxidermist hovered—

clinical, exact,

scraping away the softness

as though it had never lived.

Then the priest entered,

monotone and cold:

"Sinner."

He pronounced it like a diagnosis.

In the antiseptic white light,

peace arrived—

impersonal,

like anesthesia.

A life saturated with

love—futile,

unforgivable—

branded sin.

Now,

I prepare

for the final procession,

wrapped tightly

in the membrane

of my own remains.

Amid the red,

the pink,

the sterile disarray—

the heart lay displaced,

not dead,

just excluded.

It looked at me—

begging.

But even a corpse

cannot lie.

Even a corpse

cannot disown its crime.

So I whispered,

to what once pulsed for me:

"Wish you an eternity…

ahead."