After

Once they strap you in the electric chair
it’s only a matter of time
before the lightning becomes your advisor,
telling you this storm is of no consequence
as you go into the Light.

On the other side, you find
no one. No God, no Devil,
no deity wild or tame, no resting place,
neither cloud nor flame. All there is
is a droning in the dark, a song that keeps you guessing

for hours, perhaps days or decades —
who is that chanting for?
Is it your dirge, or perhaps your accusation come to haunt you
for eternity? Or are the angels simply telling you
that murder is murder, no matter how many laws

are made to explain it away? You will sit there
wondering for what back home you’d have called “forever”
before you meet the reason you’re here. When he comes up to you,
whole again as he was not when you left him
on the street back in the life before,

you are briefly terrified until you recall that nothing more
can happen to either of you. He sits beside you,
and that singing envelopes you, you join in,
but these are not your voices!
What is left inside you after death cannot sing the way you sang in life…

here, you are brothers. You killed him, he died, and all
is forgotten as you sit together waiting for the ones
who sent you here to join the chorus. It is not
for you to understand how you came to be here.
All you can do now is sit, sing, listen, and wait.