Healing Leaves and Unimaginable Flowers

What other indignities
must I suffer flagrantly before I find the Just
               City, the garden I left
before I was even born? Pull up the policies,
               quote the terms of agreement,
provide me with tables of the precise point-value
               breakdown before I break down

               or out or up or through to
the other side of grievance because it’s not so much
               the indignities themselves
as the uncertainties regarding their relative
               scoring: when I mispronounce
peony to rhyme with pony, stressing the long O—
               like crony, phony, stony—

               how many points do I earn?
When I ask the woman in the none-too-slimming black
               dress when she’s going to have
her baby, and she tells me four months ago, how much
               is that worth? How much closer
am I to the long-promised prospect of healing leaves
               and unimaginable

               flowers? I picture heaven
as a Customer Service desk where polo-shirted
               personnel with name badges
brocaded with the swoops and lags of a strange language
               laugh and chat without ever
answering the bright red phones that ring without ceasing,
               and I can take to them all

               the unfulfilling moments
of my unfulfilling life—like some defective pair
               of clunky VR goggles
weighting a white plastic bag twist-knotted at the top—
               for a refund or exchange.
They don’t ask for a receipt. They only want to know
               if I am ready and when

               I tell them I’ve been ready
my whole life, the phones stop ringing, the chatter snaps off,
               they stare at me with something
between sadness and bewildered ardor and wish me
               a good day and send me back
into the world, which is just what it has always been:
               one big, beautiful garden.