The Afterlife by Lynn Sharon Schwartz

I think about this one a lot.

I dreamed I was in the afterlife, it was so crowded,
hordes of people, everyone seeking someone, staggering
every which way.

Who should I search for? The answer came quick: my mother.
I elbowed my way through strangers till I found her, worn,
like the day she died.

Mother, I cried, and threw my arms around her, but she
wasn't happy to see me. Her arms hung limp. Help me,
I said. You're my mother!

There are no mothers here, she said, just separate souls.
Everyone looks for their mother. I searched for mine, and found her
searching for her mother,

And so on, through the generations. Mothers, she said,
fathers, families, lovers are for the place you came from.
Here we are on our own.

Here is no help, no love, only the looking. This
is what death means, my child, this is how we passed
eternity, looking

For the love we no longer know how to give. I shuddered
myself awake. And yet -- my child, she said, my child.
Or did I only dream
that word, dream within a dream?