Ars Moriendi

My grandfather told me that I would find the map to heaven in the sky.
"the clouds are secret doors for the wicked to sneak through."
So, at 6, I spent my hours searching the sky for a cloud big enough that my whole family could fit.

My mother said he was just plain crazy. 
She told me heaven was dying after a sinless life and that for a girl: the only sins I really had to worry about were men.
So, at 12, I told the boy who asked me to the movies, "no." He didn't like that word much and said so with a few bruises in places I didn't dare mention.

My brother said that heaven was found in a Bible.
He had always been better at navigation than me.
So,at 13, I stopped going to youth groups because heaven surely couldn't be found next to people who tasted miserably alone.

Some werewolf boy told me that heaven wasn't in the secrets or the starvation that I was learning to love.
But I was more concerned with my own nightmares.
So, at 14, I told him I didn't love him: again, and again, and again. Till he believed me.

My father told me that only calculators go to heaven. 
With mathematical accuracy, he provided a proof that feeling got you right back to the nothing you began with.
So, at 15, I turned people into variables, solvable for the equations I liked building in my head.  I stopped dreaming.

My first friend told me heaven was found in philosophy.
By that point, I had no intention of disagreeing and losing the fragile happiness of debate.
So, at 17, I let him kiss me and knew I was damned because I could feel death and hopelessness falling onto my soul the very second I did. 

I read a book that told me I would always be alone no matter how surrounded I might keep myself.
Isolation, perhaps would lessen the lost-girl.
So, at 19, I moved into a small apartment, stopped believing in happiness, and spent my hours watching people drink and dance in the little parking lot below me.  I loved when it rained.

I met a boy with hell on his shoulders
He told me heaven was in pendants and charms.
So, at 20, I left him since that's what a good calculator does.

Just recently, I plugged my ears when someone started talking about heaven.
I realized that every-which way I look, I'm purely damned.
So, at 21, I've been looking up to the sky, and I think I've found a cloud just my size.