(Belated) Elegy for Octavia E. Butler a Week After RBG Passed

Here lies a woman Here lies a monument of splintered bone and settled dust Look how she’s fixed her future among the stars

This week I will quote Parable of the Sower too many times Repeat myself thrice over so that He asks if I believe in the power of nurture over nature In the serendipity of seeds And

I’ll kiss the earth Preach   “God is Change”   Before I even know the devil is a hungry sparrow

Have I sinned if I never believed In my own religion until I wrote it?

Perhaps In yesteryears   I tried to take root in lost truths

But now   ‘The Book of the Living’ reads Something like “Justice”

Why does the grieving tongue only speak in parables?

Here lies a woman Here lies a monument of splintered bone and settled dust

Have I sinned if I never believed That God could live forever

Or that Death visits prophets in sets of three?

Little deities expiring with every exhale I only know what was and what is

Today We rose to the sight of a fresh mourning and were consoled by the constant of change