Michelle Bitting: BIRTHDAY VISIT TO A GRAVE • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Michelle Bitting
BIRTHDAY VISIT TO A GRAVE

So much said, up to now, about the way he died. The subtle and blatant signs. The booze and boyfriend problems. The gun and money chaos. How for a long time he’d been leaning over an edge no one could coax him from. This late in the day, she’s grateful for a lingering March sun, its warm palm pressed to her cheek. How the stone feels solid and cool—the iron letters of his name elevating her fingers. She ties the stem of a shiny Mylar flower to a rock found in the columbarium, and watches it dance in the air. Everything lost eventually rises and floats there, carefree and painless, if you let it. The way when he was a baby she’d lift him to the light in his yellow room, his little round body giggling and sighing high above her, smelling of milk and talc and lavender, his baby toes and pits and belly she’d press her nose to and inhale, then later bathe in oiled water when his scent turned sour and he needed soothing. The final swaddling she perfected so he’d feel protected, held. Like a hug that sort of buries you but at the same time helps you breathe.

Michelle Bitting was recently named a City of L.A. Individual Master Artist Project grantee and is the author of seven poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles, winner of the Wilder Prize. Her poem “Twyla” was commissioned by the City of L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs for the Paris/L.A. Olympiad cultural exchange. Recently, her Poem-Play was named runner up in the Pomegranate London Poem-Play Contest and will be performed at The Cockpit Theater by Theater Voliere in London this spring. She won the 2025 Banyan Review Poetry Prize, and her forthcoming collection Ruined Beauty will be published by Walton Well Press in June, 2026. Bitting is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.