Pity Heaven.

You thought it would be full of light.

That was the first lie.

The second:

that you’d be welcomed.

Arms open.

Your name spoken like water

after drought.

But it was orderly.

Painless.

A palace of stillness

with no door for grief.

They had no use for your stories.

No hunger for the crookedness

that made you human.

Here, the trees do not rot.

The rivers run without urgency.

No one aches.

No one forgets.

You tried to tell them—

about the smell of skin after rain,

the heat of shame,

the thrill of touching something

that might leave.

They listened

the way marble listens.

Pity heaven,

you thought.

It never learned

to want.

Pity the clean air,

the unbitten apple,

the eternal noon

without shadow.

In time,

you stopped speaking.

You walked the wide halls

without echo.

You became

what they wanted:

silent,

unwounded,

godlike.

And nowhere in that shining vastness

did you find the one thing

you were promised—

forgiveness.