entry fee

as far as i know
they are still trying to get
aunt joan into heaven.
the family pays for 
a mass each year where
like coins in an endless machine
everyone
besides me because i am a heretic
go & mumble little paper airplanes 
at the sky. i am told there is
a threshold
where you have been prayed for enough
that something shifts.
i like to imagine it like a puzzle door
in tomb raider.
she was a small women with 
hair dyed orange right up
until the end. she had alzheimer's 
& sometimes she would just
hold my hand & weep.
i loved her more than the other aunts.
she was always the one to make jokes.
the one to come with me
& sit on the porch while i picked
crabapples. i refuse to believe 
that there is some kind
of entry fee even into an afterworld.
i want to know where those prayers go though.
no to her. she is in the water 
& the crabapples & sometimes,
on the right year, she's in 
the backyard pear tree. the prayers, they spin
like flipped quarters. heads or tails
without a bet. i do not pray for her.