I want to hang a big painting on the wall
of this rented house but I don’t actually want
to live here. These jaundiced rooms
the color of a dehydrated person’s piss.
Religion talks about purgatory, that weak
and pallid realm between heaven
and hell, where I imagine bored ghosts
skip invisible stones across an invisible lake.
I think if they’re right and purgatory is real,
you don’t have to die to get there.
You can stand at the kitchen sink and eat a sad
sandwich. Some tasteless meat pressed
between the heels of God and the devil.
You don’t have to be good or bad here.
You just get the mail and there are no letters
or birthday cards, just past due bills
and flyers for missing people. It rains
all the time. If not then the sky is a cloudless
slab of drywall. You can skip a real stone across
a real lake and not even cause a ripple.