The stars are a river of souls.
Each marks a place for a life alight in eternity.
I placed them there.
I helped serve the communion that launched the ascension
of the little souls I loved so much, and miss.
Every.
Single.
Day.
Their faces, alight in song, I see before me in twilight;
until darkness falls, the drug of sleep disguising splendor.
Death is a necessary gateway to eternity.
The pictures.
They do not show the splendor.
They hide it in a frozen moment of seeming horror.
Flies alight on corpses, swollen with fluid, in the heat of the jungle.
The seeming corruption of the bodies
hosting incorruptible souls.
I carry it all inside me.
The private glory.
The public horror.
Mostly I live alone with my secrets.
Few can know the ascending spiral of bliss, the ecstasy of devotion.
To service.
To ideals.
To the one man who held the key to it all, led us up the staircase of glory,
opened the door to the flights of heaven; then the pull, the fall of gravity.
Jim Jones. Reverend Jones. His worshipful.
(Marganne Glasser lives in Poulsbo, Washington. She may be reached at MarGlasser5@gmail.com.)