when we’re sitting on a couch half past 1 am, holding hands and breathing together, I say that we have souls. I lie and say that there is an afterlife, because there’s no way that afterwards there is nothing, and so nothing can ever end, and her hand is still clammy but more still. I lie and say that I have answers to the mysteries of the universe to stop her from spending the night panicked and awake about the value of life. I lie and say that even when we go to ashes and bone dust, we still are there and not just in our pine and cardboard boxes underground. I lie and say that we will be a like a battery without a charge, which makes her grip on my hand loosen. I lie and say that the battery isn’t broken but dislodged, flipped, positive hitting positive. I lie and say there is no synaptic transfer, no generation of electrons; if energy cannot be made or unmade, then surely it can be moved. I lie and say that it can be put back. I lie and say these things even though I know that a human is not a blinking circuit board and the universe is not a machine. I lie and say that I believe in the spectacular, because maybe when the universe gets too far from itself and collapses inwards, for a brief moment time will be all at once and, even though we’ve been in the dirt longer than we were above it, in that brief moment our energy our souls will collide and that will be what we call afterlife. I lie and say I believe in a god or in godliness because she trusts my words on the subject more than the people in her life who have always told her that heaven is real, because if a skeptic believes it then it might be true, so I say there’s no way that afterwards there is nothing even though the opposite comforts me, and let it lie.