our souls.

what happens to the soul
of an apple once it dies?
what happens to the soul
of a tree, the soul of an
ant, the soul of a bee?

what happens to a lego
house once taken apart?
where does the house
go? who can we ask?
who really knows? is it
the bricks that make a
house, or a house that
makes the bricks? is it
our body that makes us
move, or our souls that
make us tick?

how do we make sense
of what we’re told? how
do we make sense of
our very souls?

after life, part five

Antje looked down at some sort of scale. “Fuckity fuck fuck,” she said, “we’re going to be short again. There isn’t enough.”

“Great, as if we weren’t in enough shit already,” Erich chimed in.

They were responsible for this farm. Thousands of cows with thousands of workers. Milking away. They literally stood in cow dung that came up to their ankles.

“Any chance we could fudge the numbers? “ Erich continued, “When was the last time we…”

“Fudge the numbers?” Antje interrupted, “Are you out of your mind? What if someone notices? What if an angel does an audit? Or worse, what if God is looking? Are you willing to take on that responsibility on behalf of all these people? We’ll all suffer for this.”

“We’ll suffer if we’re short, and we suffer if we lie. What are the odds?”

“I am not in the mood to play the odds. We’ve played the odds before and we have the scars to show for it.”

“We can try and recruit extra help.”

“Who will come here now? We don’t have the time to recruit people anyway.”

“Well, I spoke to the guys at the rooms not too long ago. They said they’d see what they could do.”

“Oh? Who did you speak to? I hope not to the Buddhists. There’s nothing more useless in hell than a Buddhist,” Anjte said with a slight smirk. The type of smirk that tried to balance itself between truth, humour and some sense of impending doom.

“No no. I spoke to almost everyone else, the Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, agnostics. And a whole bunch more. I don’t know if any will come through.”

“Hmmm, but if they do we might be in good shape. Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“But here we are now. And here we are still.”

“Still, it’s better than handling bees.”

“That it is,” Antje looked back down at the scale, “That it is.”

yesterday.

i remember yesterday
as if it were yesterday.
and the day before that
as if it were the day before yesterday.

but the moment i remember any day
before the day before yesterday
as if it were yesterday,
i forget the day
that was yesterday.