Once upon a time…

They stamped our wrists at the pearly kiosk, ink that smelled like rain on pavement. “Orientation in fifteen,” the greeter said, smiling like a flight attendant. We’d come as a hiking club, the news later called us—six friends, one rope of history knotted tight. Heaven looked like a city that cleaned itself nightly: spotless plazas, politely humming clouds, schedules posted on gold-lit boards.

Rules arrived as leaflets. No improvising hymns. No climbing the radiance scaffolds. No private memorials; grief must be communal and approved. We tried to keep our heads down, but Mateo set a cairn of borrowed halos where the sunrise hit an empty overlook for his brother. A warden drifted over, calm as an elevator chime. “Unauthorized veneration,” he said. The halos winked out.

We petitioned, signed our names in light. Denied. Appeals required a sponsor with wingspan class B. None of us qualified. So we took the long stairs behind the choir school, the ones marked Staff Only, and held our breath at the pipework of dawn.

We sang his stupid soccer chant anyway, off-key, human, and the city dimmed a fraction, as if listening.