Three days after the creation of animals,
and two weeks before the fall,
at the primordial sundown meal they called supper,
after playing with cats that had never been kittens
and thinking up names for the owl and the dog,
Eve and her man Adam played a fantasy game
they called NEXT in which they dreamed up
both subsequent and consequent worlds.
Eve, always the rosy cheeked optimist,
on their last prelapsarian day,
imagined ahistorical happy heavens
with all harps but no harpies,
and Adam, always the pessimist,
on their first postlapsarian day,
imagined a hot hysterical hell.
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Lapsarian = A theological term referring to Adam and Eve’s
fall (L. lapse) from innocence after eating the forbidden
fruit in the garden of Eden. The prefixes ‘pre’ and ‘post’ indicate
before or after the fall.