*** Octavia’s Constellations***

I remember your first words

the way dry earth remembers rain~

___

sudden,

holy,

and impossible to ignore.

___

I opened your book

and a thousand Black suns

rose inside my chest.

___

Ancestor dust became constellations.

Tomorrow put on a brown face.

Destiny slipped out of its disguise.

___

You wrote like a woman

who had eavesdropped on eternity,

then came back carrying seeds

hidden in her pockets.

___

Not flowers~

___

worlds.

___

Whole worlds.

___

You taught me that change

isn’t a storm arriving.

___

It is the storm realizing

it has always been the sky.

___

And Lord, how you loved us~

not with soft illusions,

but with hard truth,

sharp as obsidian,

beautiful as midnight skin

beneath a watchful moon.

___

You saw what hunted us.

___

You saw what healed us.

___

You saw our children

walking barefoot through futures

others swore could never exist.

___

and still~

___

you left bread crumbs

through the wilderness of becoming.

___

A map made of memory.

A compass made of possibility.

___

Now when I hear the stars

speaking in their ancient tongue,

when I feel my ancestors

tugging gently at my sleeve,

___

I think of you~

___

sitting somewhere between prophecy

and prayer,

___

teaching the universe

how to dream Black

without apology.

©️mustafasantiagoali

Happy Birthday Auntie [Octavia E. Butler]