Dating : My Trip to Hell

I was tired but not out of breath feeling the weight of my world
my sins
my wins
my regrets
my begets
my alms
my psalms
my fears
my smears
and I kept running and running and running

and I stopped and saw a forest but it was so far away and I didn’t know what else to do so I crouched down onto my knees and I started digging the soft ground with my hands and to my surprise the ground was very forgiving like pieces of foam and I clawed at the ground and cupped my hands to scoop up the earth only it wasn’t earth I guess you’d say I scooped up the hell(?) and I dug and I dug and as I birthed a vertical tunnel I remembered the game Dig Dug and I feared a dragon was going to blast me with fire which triggered the memory of my mother telling me about the kinds of fires you see in hell

the fires the fires they neither burn you into ashes nor melt you like steel yet you roast you like a bone glowing ghost-white with the fever of your sins

and then I thought of myself as that bone in 2001: A Space Odyssey that the ape or gorilla or whatever tosses into the sky after beating the brains out of that other ape or gorilla or whatever and I returned to my digging and soon I didn’t see the sky anymore because I was so deep and my tunnel so narrow I felt swallowed by a leviathan

and for three days I remained like a carrot enrobed in ground cool but not damp until something inside me told me to rise and I clawed my way out

and there was no longer any forest in the distance only the cracked scars of a long-drained river in every direction

and by this point I knew running would lead me nowhere so I walked and I focused not on my steps but on mistakes and on-purposes until I felt someone walking in lockstep and the presence felt familiar and scary and I was afraid to look and I said are you the devil and through a wheezy laugh he said no I’m Uncle Pat and I looked and he was right

and I said what do I do now and said something I didn’t hear and I asked him to repeat himself and he said, chin up

and he smiled and as I remembered him lazing in a cheap patio chair armed with a Lucky and a Piels in my parents’ yard many Labor Days ago I found myself in my own yard in my own plastic Adirondack chair that was never as comfortable as it looked in the Home Depot garden section and I gingerly stroked the swelling heat blister on the unprotected skin under my left eye wondering in a drooling haze what time it was and whether she was coming back or if she really meant it this time