Reaching Heaven

Where is all my love for you supposed to go?
It cannot come out on this paper
or down my face or laid on your grave.

It cannot be etched into my skin
or put in a box with your hospital gown.
I cannot hang it on a wall or wear it around my neck.

My love for you cannot be contained
or re-directed or pushed aside.

A love this big was meant to fuel
a thousand sleepless nights and make sweet milk to feed you.
It was meant to warm you and protect you.

It was meant to last the next 60 years until you buried me,
and not the other way around.

So where is all my love for you supposed to go?
It flutters around me
it gets stuck in my throat
it bursts through the front door,
and I do not know how to greet it.

I follow a narrow stone path to come to you
and pass the markers of other angels
torn from this earth, wrapped in this earth —
held tightly in earthly love.

The aroma of that love
mixes with the stench of hating God,
and my question grows louder.

It rises alongside the howls from other mothers here
Desperate to know a reason why.

But our pleas bounce off these tiny gravestones
And trap us in a hell only echo chambers can create.

Defeated and restless
We ask, and we beg, and we pray

Dear God can you just tell us if little souls reach Heaven…
Who even helps them find their way?