At Bethany
To the man who gave my brother
back to me, wrapped in linen but
breathing, the man who wept
at my tears, whose feet I sat at
inhaling his stories, this warm man
who will hang for all my flaws,
my wrong turns and my pain—
To this man, I give the best
oil I find, wrapped with my hair
and my early tears of mourning.
I anoint those feet I used to sit at
exhaling all my fears, this firm man
replacing them with his hands.
To you, it seems too much.
But next to a brother’s breath or
blood, no perfume measures up.
Alixa Brobbey spent portions of her childhood in The Netherlands and Ghana. She has a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, where she won the Academy of American Poets Ethel Lowry Handley Poetry Prize in 2020. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Blue Marble Review, Segullah, Inscape, The Albion Review, The Susquehanna Review, The Palouse Review, The Exponent II, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and others. She is currently a law student at Brigham Young University. Reach her at facebook.com/alixawrites
About the poem
Readers of the scriptures sometimes complain about the lack of prominent women. In writing this poem, I wanted to elevate Mary of Bethany from a background character to a protagonist by linking three events she was mentioned in to form one cohesive narrative.
