by Gale Acuff
In Sunday School today Miss Hooker said
that everybody must die, sooner or
later, which scared me because I’m only
ten years old to her twenty-five and I
love her and want to marry her one day
and that scares me, too, love I mean, almost
as much as death, I mean almost as much
as death scares me. On the other hand, does
love scare death, too? I might pray about that
tonight, before I go to sleep, after
I say the Lord’s Prayer and the others
for my dog and my folks and for the test
I have in English tomorrow, that I
might pass it. I don’t want to die but if
I do tonight then that’s the only way
not to take the test but not get zero.
I kind of hate to have to go that far
but I doubt that I’d regret it, being
dead, regret missing the test I mean. But
I might regret being dead as well, though
being dead how could I regret death? That
sounds like something only the living do.
I wish there was a way to try death out
without having to become purely dead,
I mean dead forever. I’d like a shot
at it and if I didn’t take to it
then I’d like to come back. If I liked it,
though, then I’d probably stick with it. But
I don’t think it’s likely. The closest thing
to it that I can think of is sleep, when
you’re knocked out for a while, but dreaming, then
you’re up again and feeling better. Is
that because you needed the rest or you
escaped sleeping forever and so you’re
excited to be back in action? When
Miss Hooker asked us to raise our hands if
we want to go to Heaven when we die
I didn’t raise mine. What’s the matter, Gale,
she asked. Well, I said, I don’t want to die
at all. Some of my classmates giggled and
Miss Hooker smiled but not like a smarty.
I know what you mean, she said–no one wants
to die but if you’re going to live, well,
then you’re going to have to pass away.
And if you believe in Jesus, that He’s
the Son of God and died for your sins and
everyone else’s, too, then when you die
you’ll get to meet Him yourself in Heaven.
Yes ma’am, I said–it’s a real good story
but I still don’t want to go, I want to
live forever and not just when I’m dead.
I want to live forever now, I mean,
without having to die to do it. Oh,
dear, Miss Hooker said–it’s the best God
can do, I suppose. Then she took off her
glasses and started to clean them. Then she
dropped her tissue and stooped to pick it up.
Then she dropped it in picking it up and
I felt like Satan, I’m not sure why, just
hot and stubborn and somehow justified.
Then Miss Hooker put her glasses back on
and asked me to recite the Lord’s Prayer,
which I did, and when I came to Amen
I only mouthed the thing because we say
it all together anyway and I
can’t hear my own voice but it’s fun to speak
one word, at least, as if I had God’s voice,
loud I mean, and deep, and firm, and me not
even trying. That’s power. If I die
I guess I’ll hear Him for myself or did
I really hear Him when all said Amen?
On second thought, maybe I wish I was
dead, after all, so that I could hear Him
all the time. And He can’t live over here,
I guess, at least not eternally. No,
He’s where He belongs, it seems, out of harm’s
way, living where the dead are but not dead
Himself. But that would make me damn lonely.
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in several countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.