Cyrus dreams of his late father Ali sitting on the steps of a small hardcore music venue, smoking a cigarette—a habit he'd given up after immigrating to America. Beside Ali sits a resplendent figure in orange and purple silk robes, smoking a blunt and drinking cheap wine: the poet Rumi (Jalal al-Din Muhammad). Ali recognizes him with awe, mentioning that his son Cyrus loves his work and wants to be a poet.

Rumi explains that the afterlife is about small details rather than grand ones; he plucks a star from the sky like a firefly, while Ali's plucked star turns into a tiny chicken egg. Rumi presses Ali to share something real, and Ali confesses he believes his wife Roya was cheating on him before her death. He describes how she never seemed to desire him, looked at him with pity, and grew strange and secretive on the phone during her pregnancy with Cyrus, then seemed freed and happy after his birth.

Rumi gently sympathizes and dismisses traditional paradise imagery as overrated. When Ali asks about Cyrus and the 'Orkideh stuff,' worried his son might kill himself, Rumi deflects, saying instead that Cyrus is going to write a hell of a book, and muses that martyrs are inescapable for 'us.'

A young woman in a JANE DOE shirt summons Rumi to perform. Rumi pulls Ali through the dark crowd to the stage. Onstage, Rumi silences the hall and hums a melody that the crowd—including Cyrus's friend Zee, beside Ali—begins to sway to. Rumi recites a Persian line, which Ali translates: 'The simple fire that ate you...' The audience chants it in unison as Rumi's head ignites into prophetic flame, the venue's ceiling peels open, and ash from the burning Rumi coats every star in the sky.