The eerie golden ring

Floats through the darkness like a rogue halo

After the angels fell—

Pan handed me the map,

And told me to use my heart as my compass

As I searched for an ambient glow at the end of the succession.

I imagined that my central nervous system was being operated by thousands of tiny hearses—

Empty pine boxes in the back

Yearning for a body to cradle.

Have you ever noticed no one gets buried on a sunny day?

Stuck in the loop of dreary smoke screen clouds

And the first snowfall of my twenty-fourth year—

Driving down the backroads

For me to return home in pieces anyway.

I spent more time proceeding with caution

By writing yet another poem about death

Than I did living the life I had left.

Racing the stretch of dash between my beginning and my end,

Risking slipping on black ice—

And I lost myself to the void.

Back when the sun still shined

And the birds still sang

And people had their hearts open and their hands closed.

I kept following the golden glow

Until I found where they laid the angels to rest

And I knocked on Death’s door

But it was the Minotaur’s nose.

He said the other side is just as cold.