In the Resting Place

– For Octavia Butler

There’s a memory I keep of a woman 
cleaning a headstone. Her bird-bone hands 
grab at crabgrass and clear weeds. 

She washes dates of debris
with water and tears. So fevered 
her work, I grow shameful

for never realizing a tombstone needs tending. 
If no sister, or aunt, or mother exists 
to weed a grave, how long does earth wait 

to swallow it whole? Reader, you might think,
Why didn’t she write “daughter” or “child”? 
Maybe that’s because, like Octavia, 

I have neither. I also can’t recall
the identity of that woman, but I believe
her to be an aunt. I am the aunt 

to many children, which means
I am a teacher and, sometimes, mother. 
My children are in the stars. Made of dust,

their atmosphere journeys so far into the future, 
I am dead in our embrace. Together we 
swing by the ring of a pink moon. 

Our legs dangle, and we say, “Higher!” 
And again, “Higher!” We push one another 
in circles, without end or beginning.

---

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press) and Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications). She is the director of Women Who Submit, and her poetry and essays can be found at Acentos Review, Huizache, LA Review of Books, The Offing, [Pank], Santa Fe Writers Project, and other journals. Inspired by her Chicana identity, she works to cultivate love and comfort in chaotic times. She lives in San Gabriel, CA.