In the beginning God created me,
Mother and Father helped somehow, I don’t
know the details yet, I’m only 10, I
mean the beginning of me, maybe when
I was born and God being God maybe
even sometime before. In Sunday School
Miss Hooker tells us that one day we must
die and when we do we wake up dead and there
is God before us, looking for our names
in the Book of Life and if they’re not there
then we spend Eternity in Hell, rats,
but if He tracks us down, He may be God
but He’s getting on in years so maybe
angels help Him hunt us up, we can hang
in Heaven forever, which is pretty
good because I’ve got a couple of dogs
up here and my sister a rabbit but
I don’t know any dead person to speak
of, I’ve never met one face to face. But
after Sunday School this morning I walked
up to Miss Hooker at her desk and said
You know, what’s also good about being
alive is that when you’re no-longer then
you’ll have the answer to all your questions
about life. It’s funny the way that works
and something else that’s funny is that to
get eternal life first you have to die,
God sure is clever sometimes. Miss Hooker
didn’t speak for a moment–now I know
how an eternity can be so short
–but when she did it was a word that was
a sob. My eyes went wide but then she smiled
and took off her glasses and pinched the tears
out of her inner-eye-corners, I bet
Adam gave them a name but she put them
back on, her glasses I mean, and smiled once
more and then I said, Goodbye, Miss Hooker,
I’ll see you next week, and she replied, Gale,
I certainly hope so. What can she mean?
