St. Joseph's Hospital—April 2020
Rebecca Bermudez
the ephemeral wraps around us,
silk shroud to wear
at parties and tombstones,
ice cream trucks, freezer trucks,
hospital beds.
she sits at the kitchen table
and tells me she couldn’t count
them all, that every day she walks
into work and there are
more.
i don’t know how to tell her
it will be okay,
like how i can’t say
that if i dream deeply enough,
feverishly enough,
the dead will reappear.
they frolic above me,
wander up the stairs,
whisper into floorboards
and peek through corridors.
i stay quiet until
they untether us.
the shroud slips,
they wave farewell
Rebecca Bermudez
Rebecca Bermudez is a poet and recent Juris Doctor graduate. Her passions include writing, gardening, baking, and food law and policy. She is a contributor on a prison food policy report released by the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems and has received third place in The Goronwy Owen Prize in Poetry (Group of Poems, 2019) for her collection psalms. Rebecca resides in Washington, D.C. with her cat, Leo.