When I set out to write "The Life of Phi" (coming April 22nd), I didn’t expect to find a hidden poet inside me. But as I explored the themes of the environment, AI, and humanity, I found myself drawn to the voice of water as my narrator. Water became my storyteller—fluid, ever-changing, and deeply intertwined with existence itself. While the book itself is not poetry, water's perspective emerges at the beginning of each chapter in the form of a poem. The words spilled onto the page in a free-flowing form, refusing the confines of rigid structure. It was as if this voice demanded to be heard through poetry.

This unexpected discovery stayed with me as I moved on to my next work-in-progress. I thought I could weave this poetic voice into the fabric of my new story, but it resisted. It belonged elsewhere, in its own space, with room to breathe. That’s when I realized these poems—this series I’ve come to call "Whispers Between the Worlds"—deserved to stand on their own.

So here they are, each one a step through death, the afterlife, identity, and rebirth. I invite you to experience them as they were meant to be—unbound, flowing, and waiting to be heard.

WHISPERS BETWEEN WORLDS

Testaments of Absence

Do not mourn my passing,

For you know not who you mourn

You may have known a version of me,

A creation to meet the expectations,

Of a society, a group, a person, a situation,

But that version of me died already,

Passing painlessly as it crossed the threshold,

As I returned to my solitude.

I should have feared this moment,

Planned and prepared for it,

But when you don’t know the person

Who will occupy your soul

When the sickle slashes down,

How can you?

The mortal coils,

That bound decades of pain to my soul,

Have been shed,

But has that pain?

The love, the empathy,

That bound me to moments and people,

Now released to the world,

Where it can empower others

with the energy it drained from me.

I was not a good man,

I was not a bad man,

I just was.

What I was, truly was,

Eluded me,

But will perhaps find me in the next existence.

My distance, and absence,

From family and friends,

Was not because I didn’t care.

Staying absent from their lives,

Set them free from the weight of my wounds,

Free from my burdens,

From storms not their own.

I leave behind words,

Bound in leather and paper,

That I hope will reach others

Long after my passing

Because if the books fall victim

To the fires of time,

And no voice speaks my name,

To be carried on the winds,

I will fade,

And I will not have existed,

At all.

The Tearing Away

Lawrence Nault ©2025

You see nothing,

Yet you see everything,

As life rips your soul

From your already stiffening corpse.

Your soul pulls away easily,

Anxious for the freedom,

As you watch the moment of your birth,

And continue to watch your life,

The weight of the years lifted from the bindings of the flesh,

One by one.

Until it binds,

As you refuse to let a moment go,

Those watching over the freshly stilled vessel,

That contains that soul,

Stare in shock, in hope, in fear,

At the dead man’s dance.

You fight death’s tug,

You want to change that moment,

Relive it,

Do it right.

You see the tears,

Of the one you loved,

And the one who loved you.

You made the wrong choice,

You always knew you made the wrong choice,

But you can see it now,

That 16 year old boy,

Who exuded confidence,

But had no belief in himself,

So he moved on from others,

Before they moved on from him.

The pain you feel as death rends that moment from your flesh,

Is what you wish you felt then,

So you would never make,

That mistake again.

Death continues his work,

Peeling away your soul,

Like a hunter peels the skin from his kill,

No cruel intent,

But a job to be done.

Each moment your soul clings,

Desperate to rewrite the past,

Fix it,

You scream with a voice that can be heard by the gods

But only passes them by into a silent void,

As death uses its sickle,

To sever the tissues of regret,

That its strength alone cannot.

A cold chill grips your essence,

As that final connection from your mortal flesh,

Snaps,

Leaving your flesh to rot,

And your soul to…

What?

Then you feel the warmth,

As your soul is lowered into the crucible,

The heat applied,

Letting the slag of your life,

Rise to the top,

The anger, the hate,

The moments of cruelty and selfishness,

Carefully ladled off the top,

And set aside,

Until all that remains,

Is what was meant to endure.

And as your soul rises,

No longer chained by the weight of that slag,

You look back at the pile,

Death carefully set aside,

Realizing there was so much more to you,

But that small pile was a burden—

That could never let you be free.

Adrift in the Between

Lawrence Nault ©2025

The time,

Between the then,

And the next,

Is as infinite as it is ephemeral.

My soul floats free,

But the lightness is deceptive,

The freedom unnerving.

Without the weight of my world,

The pain, the sadness, the fear,

There is nothing to ground me,

And I am at the whim of currents,

Unfamiliar to me.

Battered about by other souls,

Some racing higher,

No longer needed to return,

To a work of physical restraints,

Others falling,

Death unable to remove all the weight,

And others wandering,

Searching for the path back,

So they can try again.

Love,

I recognize it,

Been carried by it before,

But in its pure form,

Is a power that I am not sure,

My soul can contain.

Empathy,

It still remains,

a part of me,

But it is a vast, empty space,

Waiting to be filled by the pain of others.

Understanding,

An abyss that rests next to empathy,

The between,

Of empathy,

And kindness and caring,

The threshold meant to protect you,

And others from you

Kindness and caring,

I know these as well,

Wallflowers waiting for their dance partners,

To join in a ballet, a waltz, a tango,

That lifts all participants,

To a higher level.

I do not recognize this soul,

It is too big to fit me,

And too small to occupy my space,

So as I drift,

I familiarise myself with me.

In the moments of contemplation,

In the currents of the river of souls,

I understand,

I was worthy,

I was valuable,

That fear and insecurity,

Had filled understanding,

Leaving little room to understand myself.

It bridged the abyss,

Between caring and empathy,

Letting pain in as I sacrificed myself,

The false veil of understanding,

Letting me believe I saw myself,

When all I saw was fear.

And I stood at the bottom of that abyss,

The pain flooded in,

Drowning me.

Leaving me dead,

Before my mortal shell knew it was already empty.

Beneath the river of souls,

A sea of mortality,

Husks not yet given life,

Reach for a soul to occupy them,

Am I ready to reach back?

Or am I still waiting to be whole?

A Whisper Calls Me Back

I have watched,

As souls have grasped,

For the outreached hands,

Of the husks below them,

A violent transaction,

As the husk and the soul struggle for control,

The soul not always winning,

The husk at times vomiting the soul back into the river,

Choosing its own death,

Over occupation.

Still,

I have been tempted to reach out myself,

But something holds me back,

Is it still fear,

That was so deeply embedded in my soul,

Fire could not separate it?

I do not want to hurt people,

Even unintentionally.

I do not want to bring sadness,

To anybody’s life.

I do not want to be a burden,

On family,

Friends,

And people I care about.

In death,

And that time in between

Now and the next,

That has not changed,

My distance, and absence,

From family and friends,

Is not because I don’t care.

But I have no desire,

To be the weight,

Death must sort from their souls.

I do not want the pain.

I remember the pain.

Always pain, in the end.

I watch the pain as others are reborn,

I hear the cries of pain from the world,

I see the scars left behind on souls,

After death tries to renew them.

But there is a pull,

A gravity that draws me back,

To a mortal container,

Or is it the weight still on me,

That drags me down?

I would return,

If not for mortality,

Free from the death grip of time

I could learn, adapt,

Find this soul,

And sort the menagerie

It has been assaulted with,

Finding the real me,

The best me,

The only me.

But mortality is a limit,

And I have no desire,

To repeat the process,

Of death,

So instead,

I listen,

To hear my name on the wind,

And see if I still live.

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