Afterlife

It would have to be a red house—
the kind Jimi Hendrix sang about,
or the common forest cottage that
gets rented on a weekly basis
in Sweden. Brief and mysterious,
the night would bring no dreams except
its own: distant cities, radiant heat.
The door would not keep out the breeze.
Fittingly, the cabinets and walls would be
unfinished pine.  T.V. would hint
at human forms through blowing snow. The bed
would have too many quilts, and there’d be
a guest book by the door where someone wrote,
I waited here for you as long as I could.

Originally published in Alaska Quarterly Review