
Everyone’s Waiting
by Lucie Pereira
And I couldn’t tell you whether they’re in the clouds
or the flames or the spindly veins of a leaf.
Across the dimly lit room you ask,
If there is a heaven, do you think we’ll be there together?
and I understand why you take offense at my lack
of confident response. Because of course no paradise
would separate us, but somehow I can’t imagine heaven
in the way that you mean heaven—white picket fences
in the sky and flying babies and everyone’s dead childhood
dogs eager for a reunion. In my head, it’s like this:
your hand on my knee while you’re driving,
reaching over the gearshift, squinting against the glare,
and the sea opens below us, dizzying and unfathomable, it’s like
we’re a pair of trees touching limbs in a vast canopy,
and we’re a hymn sung by a pod of whales, and we’re
a fungus whose mycelium threads the breadth of a forest,
and we’re beads of condensation on the same foggy window.
It’s like you’re a punchline and I’m the laugh,
I’m the inhale and you’re the exhale, it’s like there’s a road
that keeps going and a playlist with no skips and we never wonder
if we’re there yet, and when we get there,
it’s everything.
Lucie Pereira (she/her) is a writer and educator from San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in publications including Honey Literary and The Hellebore, and her debut chapbook, From Here to the Ocean, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She currently lives in Ireland, where she is pursuing a master's in creative writing at University College Cork. Connect with Lucie on Instagram & BlueSky
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