» Poetry
If Death Is Another Dimension
If I meet Michio Kaku, I
won’t ask him about supernovas and black holes, about
New York or California, but
about his pond of fishes;
How they live two-dimensional lives
unaware that there is life beyond
water. We can’t breathe without air,
Dr. Michio Kaku. We
can’t breathe even without the love
of our loved ones; the stomach churns, the heart
beats so fast when I think of my mother; in this
limited three-dimensional existence of
social media, and nuclear bomb,
Elon Musk Brand colonies in Mars, it is
hard for me to breathe if
I think about the moment
when the doctor woke me up: we have
been looking for you; your
mother is no more.
Did he really say your mother
or patient number something-something? Did he say,
your wife, to my father who was lying in the bed
against the wall? She lived a glorious life, she lived
an abundant life, I said, hugging him with one hand,
but not asking him to stop crying. I didn’t say
it is okay because it wasn’t; I didn’t say
it will be okay because it never will be.
That was five years ago; life was different then;
winter, less harsh. Deaths, not so common as today. How
worried I would have been about her
now, if she were still living, in the world
of rationed care? This year,
when caregivers need care, while
an invisible killer sucks away our souls.
If I meet Michio Kaku, I will ask
about dimensions. He said once,
that we are like those fishes who live
in two dimensions, we are like those fishes
who can’t imagine there is life
beyond water. I will ask if death is another dimension
where good people go. Of course, the
people we love are always good.
Do people who leave us, watch us
from this dimension? Like we watch
protest marches, hot delivery post-men,
from our balconies? Or is it a new life
where you are born at the same age
you had died, and you appear
in this world as you were?
Dear Michio Kaku, if
death is another dimension, is it in this world
of rivers, deserts, mountains, meadows?
I had once watched a short film where
people go after they are dead; it is like a commune,
similar to our world: a TV, a living room, people
who spew scathing comments or shower compassion,
but this world is crowded; the character we follow
is upset, confused, remembers her past life, and doesn’t
know how she reached here. She doesn’t know
what she remembers is a past life. What if
life after life is a crowded room
with a TV blaring. Mundane, poor,
full of absences.
If I meet Michio Kaku,
I will ask him these things. I will
ask him where dead people go. If
the dead are really dead. If
the world they go to is
really a happy world where
they rest; if they live next to us,
can see us, can help us, can bless us. If
they are in peace.