The Listening

no. 9: kingdom beyond

Sometimes I think about our mortality.

I don't want to die, love.

I'm so fucking scared of dying, love.

It's all we craved for so long, but now that that's gone,
what happens now?

We're going to grow old, darling.
Our bodies and minds will wither,
we'll be set loose from our mortal tethers, far in the future.

You believe in God. You believe in life after death.

I so desperately wish to believe that, too.
I don't want to leave this and find nothing.

I don't want to stop existing.

I want to be in this moment forever.

I'm with you through the end, but I don't want it to end.

I'm so afraid of the great beyond because it could be a great vast nothingness,

an endless abyss that swallows and swallows and lets no light out.

A bottomless vat of nothing that consciousness cannot understand,
that conciousness does not exist in.

I don't want to experience that.

I want to believe that there is a great Kingdom of love waiting for us,

A land of light, where everyone we love is free and is happy, a place where we can be loved together.

If this Kingdom doesn't exist, if I die and experience nothing,

If there's just Nothing,

I think that would be Hell.

I can't even imagine not existing.

I can't imagine not being alive.

I'm terrified to.