got to be an eagle today

    really?

yep. american bald eagle, actually. soared the whole merrimack valley, saw all the animals scurrying in the snow, it was really spectacular, man, especially in the morning haze, i saw you taking jd to driving school too, off andover street, right? ha!

    that was you? ha! i had a feeling that was you. so how does it work? do you just get to pick what you get to be everyday? or—

no, it’s actually a lot different than i had imagined. heaven’s not like this big amusement park where you walk around chumming it up with socrates and jesus like in the movies, you actually don’t get to choose at all. you blink your eyes and you’re an eagle, you blink your eyes and you’re connected to everything that’s happening and everything that has ever happened. i’ve been a tree, i’ve felt the blood of the earth crawl into my limbs and reach for the sun, it’s truly marvelous, man

    wow. but wait, no shaking hands with hemmingway, then? ha, i think you’d make an impression, to be honest.

ha! no, no hemmingway, but check this—
from 7–12 pm every day i get to be 5 years old again.
it’s strange, i’m with my parents, they are alive,
i’m playing under the table in the kitchen, dreaming,
it’s beautiful, man… nobody is sick

    wow, dude. so you can time travel!?

not quite. time is less linear here, it’s like a big circle of everything that’s been, circulating, moving. sometimes i’m in the present, sometimes the past, sometimes the future. sometimes i’m somewhere carrying a burden, like propping up an airplane in turbulence over the atlantic.

wink wink

    huh? wait, what!? that was you!? i didn’t know you had passed yet, man. oh my god, i was praying like a madman that my daughter would be safe, my mother-in-law and my sponsor jimmy said a prayer before the flight and the whole flight i could feel something, i kept having this vivid image of the plane in the storm and i imagined the prayers they said as these tiny bows blue and pink stuck to the wings of the plane, but it was you, you son of a gun, thank you, you were always there for me, man… i don’t know how to repay you. sometimes i feel like i failed you, ma—

stop. let it go, man. i love you, and i’m here for you.

we pause.

    so you’ve seen the future, huh?

john, smiling wide through the phone:

yes.