Anna Girgenti 

June in Greece

There is something sad about heaven.
I know because last summer I watched 
a storm roll in, like this one, toward the island cliffs.

            It comes every year like a festival
and drenches the honey-coated fruit 
on our patio table—baklava, candied figs—

taste it all while you can, the memory
of purgatory hot on your tongue.
The sun, in her ecstasy, warps all she touches

            and leaves the gravel road unwalkable.
Something sad in the way the angels
            here all live out of suitcases. No two

speak the same language. Yes, something
sad about heaven, maybe the view. The trees, 
white and hollow, stand in a circle, their branches

  bent toward each other, crumbling into ash
at the roots. Last night I sat on the cliff’s edge           
with Lisa drinking Mythos, and we talked and

laughed about heaven. How we were once strangers
in the same airport, silent at the baggage claim, 
how we stepped into the same cab like pirates

off a plank, and how, on the path to heaven
we saw a stray dog. How we wished we could
take him with us. How he followed us, his fur 

muddied with rain, as far as he could. 
How for months we floated on our backs
in the Aegean, our ears just under water,

  oblivious to the screeching gulls,
the shoreline shrinking behind us,
the sea lifting us into the sky.