poetry: The things they don't tell you about heaven

Apples still taste like apples. Funny thing,
serpents taste like apples too, and kisses

and bread. In fact, it is all about apples,
this place. Everything you touch is smooth and red.

Your skin is comfortably heavy on your bones,
like that sleepy moment between being awake and falling

into a dream. The moon is a pendulum clock,
and light from the sun comes down in drops, as rain. And,

as any child will tell you, what we call rain is really tears,
the soul of God weeping over something great or small,

as anything with a soul will do from time to time.
Mostly, it is the apples, and a longing kind of sad.

They are firm as musculature. They smell like the flesh
and juice of unrequited love.

- Jill Alexander Essbaum, "The things they don't tell you about heaven"