I Eat Poetry

Purgatory

I will meet you in purgatory with the other
outcasts, bare-faced and oblivious.
I will meet you in the elevator
stuck on the eleventh floor with a bouquet
of white roses and a silver pocket watch.

There we will discuss the effects of claustrophobia.
We will try on each other's shoes.
We will place our fingertips in wire sockets
and scream like the dead.

But we will not be dead. In limbo the words
we dread to utter suspend like flashing numbers.
We will invade the space. Make ourselves room.

Come to answer for the times we sort-of sinned,
kind-of helped, perhaps guessed the right answer.

You will argue you had little to work with. Show them
stained hands. I will assert my soul was switched

at birth. The light will guide us. Eyes closed, knees broken- we will
continue to rise. Betray our disguise.
The fires, my friend, will not touch you.

- priscila uppal