Mrs. Buddha Calls on Mrs. God
by Patricia McMillen
published in New Ohio Review, 2000
Tea or coffee? asks Mrs. God, hopeful
for an excuse to fire up her brand-new
espresso machine, a gift from Mr. God
last Christmas (he said it was from Santa,
their little joke). Mrs. Buddha can’t
decide. So many ways to burn water!
she marvels, wondering if it’s polite
to marvel, here in Heaven. Certainly
it would be bad form back in Nirvana
but everything’s so different here—why,
outside the front gate, didn’t she just see
a billboard instructing her to “Choose Life”?
What’s that about? she wonders—failed
attempt at humor, maybe? Still, it gets
boring back home: each day the same,
so quiet, no rebirths, no red eggs and ginger,
no—you know—fireworks. Sometimes
she finds herself dreaming of one last
turn dressed in the clothes of skin and bone,
imagining the new unmet desires,
diseases, deaths a destiny as Dragon or Dog
might bring. She’d miss her Mr. B, but he’d
be fine. She’d leave him plenty of tea cakes
to renounce—pumpkin spice, zucchini,
imported Madagascar vanilla—like those her new
friend proffers now, with a cool glass of cider,
fresh-pressed from fruit right off the tree.
