When We Die, Where We Go

by Sandeep Kumar Mishra

When we die, do we become the seeds

of all we consumed? A chorus of cravings,

Born again in soil thick with want?

Every turn in life feels like a maze of salt,

A labyrinth of sugar sticking to the walls.

The office is a temple of temptation,

Its altar lined with saccharine idols,

Gold-wrapped chocolates and crisp offerings

that crackle like fire beneath the tongue.

The burritos bloom in their foil cocoons,

heavy as guilt, fragrant as false promises.

How do we walk a straight line

through a landscape of indulgence?

Each step feels like treading quicksand,

The pretzels call, twisted like questions

we can never seem to answer.

Our bodies are battlegrounds,

Cells waging war against the flood of grease,

A rising tide of flavor engineered

to silence the signals that cry “enough.”

We are sirens to ourselves,

Singing sweet songs of surrender,

shipwrecking on our desires.

But the soul, it wants something else—

Something green, unbroken by the fryer’s hiss,

Something that speaks of life, not excess.

It whispers beneath the hum of vending machines,

A faint but stubborn voice,

like roots pushing through concrete.

When we die, will our cravings follow us,

Clinging like shadows to the bones of the earth?

Will we rise clean, a single, pure thought,

Unburdened by the weight of what we swallowed,

finally free to hunger for something eternal?