The Afterlife Has a Waiting Room

Please take a number
and have a seat.
Your eternal rest
will begin shortly.

The magazines are all from 1963,
their pages worn thin
by ghost fingers
flipping through time.

The receptionist,
neither angel nor demon,
types endlessly
on a keyboard made of smoke,
updating the status
of souls in transit.

Muzak plays softly —
all the songs you forgot
you once knew,
melodies that died
before you did.

A water cooler bubbles
with waters from Lethe —
please limit yourself
to one cup of forgetting
per existence.

The other waiting dead
avoid eye contact,
studying their ticket numbers:
A771 (died too young)
B492 (went in sleep)
C105 (still in denial)

A potted plant
that never needed water
grows dust instead of leaves.
The clock on the wall
moves only when
no one’s watching.

Through frosted glass doors,
shadows of what comes next
move like busy doctors
between appointments.

Your paperwork is incomplete:
cause of death needs reviewing,
karma calculations pending,
references from the living
still being processed.

Please remain seated.
Your afterlife experience
is important to us.
All souls will be processed
in order of departure.

Current wait time:
∞ minutes

[Now serving: A386
Your number: Z999]

The elevator music plays on,
an endless loop of
almost-remembered hymns,
while everyone pretends
this isn’t the real
eternity.