Afterlife – a poem by Cristina Legarda

Afterlife

My death was not what I thought it would be.
I was expecting tunnels, light, a life
review, and dreading, actually, that thing
you hear about – you feel what everyone
was feeling every moment that you spent 
with them, and every shadowed motive comes 
to light. Instead I got into some sort
of ship, a vessel for a thousand souls.
There was a kind of river, but no need
of pilots, boatswains, ferrymen, or ghosts 
to guide the floating ventricle across 
the void. A holy wind enfolded us in warmth, 
a glow, and seemed to guide our unseen sails.
The bardo, bathed in halos, lay ahead
containing chambers in which each of us,
alone, would face a tilted scale upon 
which lay the iridescent feather that 
would weigh our worth, that mythic, colored plume
composed of all our memories and deeds,
all curling and unfurling on a quill,
the calamus our lifepath formed from birth
on earth to our arrival here. There was
no god or angel there to take our hearts 
and place them on the balance; we just knew
we had to do it for ourselves. And so 
I cupped my hands like one in prayer, felt
my spirit coalesce, a hand, a heart,
a life with just the heft to tip the scale,
the beam’s slow tilt toward eternity
excruciatingly vertiginous
as the feather brushed against me with
what seemed, from here, like dreams – a chance
encounter, lover’s face, a cruel word, 
a secret moment when a kindness shaped
a life, my friends, my enemies, the fears
I’d known. I felt the scale swing up and down
and realized the final test was this, 
the lesson I’d been learning all along:
to choose between the heaviness of fear  
and love that turns our souls to light. I made
my final choice; the tattered feather sank;
and, clothed in light, I started my ascent.

Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She is now a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in America magazine, The Dewdrop, Pensive, FOLIO, Dappled Things, HeartWood, Coastal Shelf,  The Good Life Review, and others.